6 Replies Latest reply: May 25, 2011 3:34 AM by JWH-NIRC RSS

    Rethink design of InDesign CS5

    JWH-NIRC Community Member

      I am writing to ask you that give some serious thought to rethinking the CS5 version of InDesign. It is unusably slow. I mean REALLY slow on the fastest computer I have. I have had to stop using it all together. Compared with CS3, which moves frames and text around as fast as I can drag my mouse, I feel as if I am working on an old computer without sufficient memory in the CS5 version. There are "tips" on how to speed it up, but this doesn't fix the basic problem, which has to do with the way it was designed.

        One more request, if I may. Cs 2 and 3 were compatible. CS5 can read in but then is unusable in the earlier formats. Since I counted the installation a total loss, I am forced to move everything by hand back to the earlier version. It would be a courtesy to users if, when you prepare CS6, yu made it compatible with earlier versions. Of course, something is always lost, but not the entire job, as things stand now.

        • 1. Re: Rethink design of InDesign CS5
          BenCloutier Community Member

          I must look into those tricks to speed it up. I can't beleive peoples are actually pleased to work with InDesign CS5 with this lack of speed! I HAVE to work with CS5 with one of my client but all the others are still CS4. I still wait for a major improvement of CS5, otherwise, CS6.

          • 2. Re: Rethink design of InDesign CS5
            P Spier CommunityMVP

            I believe that at least some of the issues that you are talking about with regard to performance have been addressed in the 7.0.4 update (there have been a few posts in the main forum in threads about slow performance that the update solved particular users problems).

             

            I highly recommend turning Live Screen Drawing to delayed, or even off, particularly if you are used to CS3 where it did not exist.

             

            It's pretty unlikely that there will be any sort of wholesale architecture change such as you advocate, simply because the architecture supports the new features. Clearly a possibly large number of users have seen performance problems, but the vast majority of users do not, so it appears, at least to me, to be tied to other (relatively common, apparently) factors in the system configuration. As those factors can be identified I would expect the problems to be fixed, though not necessarily for version 7.0.x since 7.5 is now the curent release, but you never know -- the 6.0.6 patch was issued long after 7.0 was released.

             

            As far as backward compatibility, and I don't want to open that whole can of worms AGAIN, the structure of the files changes in significant ways between versions, and no .indd file will open in any version earlier than the one in which it was saved (this goes for 7.5, too -- you can't open a CS5.5 file in CS5). There has been a mechanism in place since CS2, export to interchange format, that allows LIMITED compatibilty from any version to the NEXT PREVIOUS version, but not, for example, CS3 to CS, or CS4 to CS2 or CS without going through the intermediate version(s) to get there, and unless you've failed to take advantage of the new feature sets in each new version your files would be a pale shadow of the original after multiple conversions.

             

            When CS4 was released a new interchange format, .idml, was created. Versions prior to CS4 cannot read .idml, and the old .inx export was preserved as well in CS4. It is not available in CS5. .idml is apparently a more robust and flexible format, and there seems to be some hope that it can be used going forward for better backward compatibility. .idml from version 7.5 can be read in 7.5, 7.0 AND 6.0.5 (I believe) and 6.0.6, but trying to go further back is somewat akin to trying to use metric hardware in a 1953 chevy.

            • 3. Re: Rethink design of InDesign CS5
              JWH-NIRC Community Member

              Thanks the for detailed answer. I will have a trial of 5.5 and see if the improvement brings it up to speed as you suggest.

                 I have only one more query before going to the 5.5 upgrade: I will do it on a machine that has only InDesign CS3 installed. May I still keep CS3, or will it become unusable after the upgrade?

              • 4. Re: Rethink design of InDesign CS5
                Harbs. CommunityMVP

                You can keep all versions of InDesign running side by side.

                 

                Harbs

                • 5. Re: Rethink design of InDesign CS5
                  P Spier CommunityMVP

                  JWH-NIRC wrote:

                   

                  Thanks the for detailed answer. I will have a trial of 5.5 and see if the improvement brings it up to speed as you suggest.

                     I have only one more query before going to the 5.5 upgrade: I will do it on a machine that has only InDesign CS3 installed. May I still keep CS3, or will it become unusable after the upgrade?

                  As Harbs said, you can run both. He forgot to mention that you should, and even more important, that you should not overwrite the CS3 versions of any files you convert. You cannot open CS4 or later .indd files in CS3, and you can't get from CS5 or 5.5 back to CS3 with interchange format without going through CS4 on the way.

                  • 6. Re: Rethink design of InDesign CS5
                    JWH-NIRC Community Member

                    Well, I took your advice and loaded the trial version of CS5.5 on the fastest machine around (which already has CS3), and opened an ordinary 4-5 page piece. Sure enough, just as you predicted, with "delayed" as the setting for the live screen writes, it moved smoothly and quickly, no difference from CS3.

                          Then I opened a text-intensive file of the kind we often use (48 pages with footnotes but no graphics) in InDesign CS3. I could move the frames around instantaneously. No problem. Then I closed down and opened it in CS5.5. It took 4-5 seconds to move a frame, the same as the experience I had in CS5.

                         Just to be fair, I made a completely new file, same specs, in both programs, and ran a fresh comparison. Same problem. I am happy to send a sample of the file if you want, but at the speed it is running now, we would go mad typesetting our books and journals.