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1. Re: Converting a CS3 project with assignments to CS5 format
BobLevine Jul 20, 2010 4:54 AM (in response to Mike.Edel)Here's my advice which you can take or leave.
The final step in producing a publication should be to remove all assignments and unlink all InCopy stories. This way there's no chance of wrecking an old publication or even worse, the new one.
Perhaps Anne-Marie will come along with something better, but really, recreating all of this, while a pain, may still be your best course of action.
Bob
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2. Re: Converting a CS3 project with assignments to CS5 format
AnneMarie Concepcion Jul 20, 2010 6:11 AM (in response to Mike.Edel)First, a quick doublecheck about terminology. Are you talking about *assignments* (files that ended with the INCA extension in CS3) or *linked story files* (files that ended with the INCX format in CS3)? Users confuse the two terms all the time, and they're 2 different things.
Recreating 70 assignments is indeed tedious. But recreating 70 linked stories should be easy ... just choose one of the Export All commands from the Edit > InCopy > [export...] submenu. Takes about 2 minutes at most.
Either way, yes, you need to unlink everything (technically you unlink the INCX files and delete the INCA files; all done with the same trash can icon in the Assignments panel).
That should be standard operating procedure. (It's especially true when convering an InDesign file from one v of ID to to a higher one.) People accustomed to "normal" InDesign files forget that, with live linked InCopy stories, creating a new version of the InDesign file (Save As) does not create new versions of the linked text frames, and so now they have text that's linked to 2 diff. versions of the ID file. Checking out a story and editing it for one InDesign document changes the text in the previous InDesign file as well. They're like the same Photoshop file placed into 2 diff. layouts ... when you change the image, it affects all ID files that are linked to it.
I have seen (and been called in to help clean up) nightmares with inadvertently modified text that were created this way.
Even if you took care to dupe everything and zip the archived edition and all its linked files before working on the new version, the fact is that CS5's file formats are completely different than CS3's. You missed CS4, which was a transition version.
So not only would I unlink everything, I'd also then open the CS3 ID file in CS5, export to IDML, then open the untitiled IDML file in CS5 and give it a new name, then start fresh with new assignments and linked story files.
I can't see the whole procedure taking longer than an hour or two. A small investment of time in what sounds like a critical publication for your company. If I'm mistaken, and it's much more complicated than I'm assuming, please tell us more.
AM
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3. Re: Converting a CS3 project with assignments to CS5 format
Mike.Edel Jul 20, 2010 10:40 AM (in response to Mike.Edel)Anne-Marie and Bob,
thanks for taking the time to answer - had to digest that, though
Weeeeeelll I fear it's not that easy.
@Bob:
Over here the project (publication) isn't done until it's printed. So we have to cope with last second changes.I fear that we will never be able to exactly estimate when it's time to unlink the InCopy stories. Probably nothing that's new to you...
But I see the point...So we should unlink everything now and rebuild the assignments from scratch for the 2010 issue? I will have to test that. It's PIA but if it gets the job done... The last thing I want is to have the file break down in mid-project.
@Anne-Marie: yes, those are real actual assignments, all created from the layouted pages (the format is pretty strict with the space each article/segment gets so that was pretty clear from the beginning). One .inca per assignment (one assignment per article/segment) + several .incx for the text frames it contains. Overall number of .incx files: 1059.
What I (we) want to do is to take the old version, archive it (done that) and start a new issue thats an exact copy in the beginning. But the new one has to be in CS5.
I'm not really comfortable with going the idml route - we have about 50 linked (and formatted) excel tables in there that are very sensitive to minor changes. In fact, I dare not to touch them at all if possible.
Will saving to idml keep all the formatting? Just getting the tables to work took about a week but saved us about 2 weeks of editing time and a lot of pain. We absolutely can't lose them. But I guess trying it won't hurt...Anyway, you have certainly pointed me in the right direction - I will have to discuss it with my colleagues before actually doing anything to the files.
Many thanks,
Mike
ps:
I had the impression that when you "save as" an InDesign file with assignments in it it always re-creates new assignments instead of using the old ones. We had some hassle with that "feature" when we tried to make backup copies of the first InDesign/InCopy projects we did.
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4. Re: Converting a CS3 project with assignments to CS5 format
AnneMarie Concepcion Jul 20, 2010 11:54 AM (in response to Mike.Edel)>I had the impression that when you "save as" an InDesign file with assignments in it it always re-creates new assignments instead of using the old ones.
Assignments (INCA files in CS3, ICMA files in CS5) are strange beasties. Although they are standalone files ... something you can attach to an email for example ... they are not linked to the layout. (they don't appear in the Links panel.) They're more like "children" of the layout. If you do a Save As to a layout, the new layout starts out childless. If it used to have assignments, they'll be listed as Missing in the Assigments panel, even though they haven't moved.
And you can't relink to the assignments either ... again, because they weren't linked to in the first place. All you can do is "Change Location" which actually simply means "Create a NEW assignment file that is associated with the same linked story files as the missing assignment."
So there is absolutely no getting away from having to create new assignment files.
If your layout file is so fragile that it won't survive a trip out to IDML and back, then I would never trust it to an IC/ID workflow. Egads! ;-) Break that file up into smaller INDD files so it's stable and robust. Use the Book feature for keeping up with pagination if necessary.
Exporting to IDML simply clears out any corruption or damage internally in the file, as well as superfluous information. Yes you may end up having to tweak a few things, but it should definitely retain all the formatting for tables etc.
Simply converting the layout from CS3 to CS5 will rewrite internal structures and possibly change some hyphenation and line breaks. Give yourself plenty of time in vetting the CS5-era file before diving back into production.
AM
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5. Re: Converting a CS3 project with assignments to CS5 format
BobLevine Jul 20, 2010 1:05 PM (in response to AnneMarie Concepcion)I like to compare the assignment files to book files. They can't really live on their own.
Bob
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6. Re: Converting a CS3 project with assignments to CS5 format
Mike.Edel Jul 20, 2010 1:42 PM (in response to AnneMarie Concepcion)AnneMarie Concepcion wrote:
Assignments (INCA files in CS3, ICMA files in CS5) are strange beasties. Although they are standalone files ... something you can attach to an email for example ... they are not linked to the layout. (they don't appear in the Links panel.) They're more like "children" of the layout. If you do a Save As to a layout, the new layout starts out childless. If it used to have assignments, they'll be listed as Missing in the Assigments panel, even though they haven't moved.
Nice analogy
Maybe it isn't the layout which is so fragile but my trust in it. I'll try and see... After all the project went really well (at least technically) last year.
Thanks for clearing up what the IDML roundtripping does. We sometimes do similar things with PowerPoint files in extreme cases.
The layout is of course broken up into several INDD files - it used to be one INDD per article/section (overall more than 60) but this was so impractical that we put together larger blocks last time.
Does the book to pdf export also occur in the background btw? It took about 30-40 minutes the last time we did it so that would be welcome.
Regarding hyphenation and line breaks: yea, we are basically expecting some things to re-flow. But I was surprised to see basically no changes on a smaller publication we converted this week.
Many thanks again,Mike
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7. Re: Converting a CS3 project with assignments to CS5 format
BobLevine Jul 20, 2010 1:50 PM (in response to Mike.Edel)Book to PDF does not occur in the background. This turns out to be a good thing since some users are experiencing freeze ups with the background export.
My advice has been to create a one document book and export it that way.
Bob
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8. Re: Converting a CS3 project with assignments to CS5 format
Mike.Edel Jul 20, 2010 1:58 PM (in response to BobLevine)Oh, good to know - thanks for the fast update.
Only tried the background export twice and it worked. But the files were trivial.
Well, time to get faster machines
Mike



