I've been experiencing strange behaviour when opening a InDesign CS4 file file with InDesign CS6: the kerning and spacing is all off:
Original file:
opened in InDesign CS6:
Is this a conversion error? Is there a setting/pref I've got wrong?
There is, indeed a conversion effect, but not really an error, when opeing files in newer versions. The text engines change form version to version and you can expect text to reflow. I'm surprised, though that the tracking has changed. Normally you don't see reflow when opeing a .indd file in the newer version until you touch the text frame in some way.
You might want to send the file through .idml (which will force all the text to recompose as a side effect when it is reopened). See Remove minor corruption by exporting
Thanks for your swift reply. Alas it does'nt work:
idml exported from CS4 openend in CS6
inx exported from CS4 opened in CS6
Waht does it look like in a PDF exported from CS6?
Are you using the same computer where the file was created? If not, perhaps you have a different version of the font installed on the new machine.
The designer who set the text is indeed on a different computer - she has Windows + InDesign CS4, I have Mac OSX 10.8.3 + InDesign CS6 (version 8.0.1) here. I will ask her to resend me her fonts. Thanks for you input, I'll keep you posted.
It's more than a year ago since this issue was reported, but at this time I'd had the same problem when opening a CS4 document in CS6/CC.
I was amazed that a header, placed in capitals, looked different in CS6/CC. But at last, after several tests, i've came to the conclusion that "forced" capitals behaving different than "real" capitals. In others words: when you forcing text to capitals the kerning would be different in CS6/CC. When you place text in real capitals (Shift + text) the kerning is the same as in both InDesign versions.
Text in CS4:
As you can see: in CS4 there's no difference between real capitals en forced capitals.
Below the results when opening the CS4 file in CS6/CC:
I'm not sure if there are still people struggling with this problem, but hopefully was is this helpful.
Thanks for reporting back on this. Peter Spier mentioned early on that recomposition could be a factor, a possibility you eliminated for the original CS4 samples by running them through *.inx and *.idml. Could it be that opening a CS4 file in CC does not force recomposition? Did you try forcing it? (The Keyboard shortcut for recompose all stories is Command-Option-/ [slash] or Ctrl-Alt-slash.) I also wonder whether you see the same effect for text with kerning set to Metrics rather than Optical (and presumably toggling between would force local recomposition).
I'll also add that as a Windows user I was initially confused by the appearance of a post-CS4 icon for ID in your CS4 sample, but then I remembered that may be a Mac quirk.
David
David W. Goodrich wrote:
Could it be that opening a CS4 file in CC does not force recomposition? Did you try forcing it? (The Keyboard shortcut for recompose all stories is Command-Option-/ [slash] or Ctrl-Alt-slash.) I also wonder whether you see the same effect for text with kerning set to Metrics rather than Optical (and presumably toggling between would force local recomposition).
In fact just opening a .indd in a newer version does not force a recompose. Touching the text will trigger it, though, and that can have some very unpleasant reflow implications in longer docs, with chapters running into overset, or starting on the wrong page and the unsuspecting user might not notice.
