Future of Professional Publishing?
Calling it "the first significant advancement in page layout in more than a decade," Adobe InDesign is designed around an open architecture that provides greater flexiblility and the ability to integrate with existing and future systems.

Third party developers can readily create tools that customize and extend the capabilities of the software to meet customer needs.

For the end user some of the productivity and creativity features include:

• Opens QuarkXPress and PageMaker 6.5 files.
• Import Photoshop, Illustrator, and PDF files and edit from within the program.
• Keyboard shortcuts for QuarkXPress.
• Direct PDF support and output.
• Same interface as Photoshop and Illustrator.
• Document-wide layers.
• Optical kerning, automatic ligatures, variety of grids, and other typographic and layout controls.
• Nested text and graphic frames -- paste frames within frames.
• Gradient fills and strokes.

InDesign vs. QuarkXPress vs. PageMaker
Although a Publish Special Report says that on the surface the frame-based InDesign more closely resembles QuarkXPress than Adobe's other major page layout program, PageMaker, they also outline some of the major differences. The flexibility of InDesign also includes the ability to choose between importing data using QuarkXPress's frame-based method or the "more free-form approach" of PageMaker.

To the user and "underneath the hood" InDesign looks and operates much like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop -- bringing many graphics features such as layers, bezier tools, and gradient fills over to the page layout environment.

Win 98, Win NT, and Mac 8.5.1 versions are expected to be available in Summer 1999 with an estimated street price of $699.
[Press Release: Next Generation of Professional Publishing Software]
[Professional Publishing Platform]