Home > Tech > Tech Tools > Annotations for InDesign
Digital Asset Management Tools
Annotations for InDesign 
Xinet® WebNative® Suite Annotations within Adobe InDesign.
For more on Annotations, please see:
Feature Overview
With thousands of systems available for annotating and correcting documents during the production process, choosing the right one can be a challenge. While each has its advantages, most provide few tools, or none at all, for the person implementing the changes. Xinet, continuing its long history of efficiency improvements for production users, has changed all that. Using Xinet tools, operators can stay in their familiar environment and save precious minutes each time they modify a document during the production process.
What It Does
Annotations for Adobe InDesign appears as a panel inside the application. Once the panel is opened, a user can find the document they want to work on by browsing or searching—on content, name, metadata, and so on. If the document is annotated, the Annotations icon is enabled.
When a user clicks the Annotations icon, two important things will happen. First, the file selection area of the panel is hidden in a tab, and a new tab, titled with the document's name, is displayed with the annotations for the document. This tab allows the operator to view the annotations made on the file, identify who made them, and see any comments. The operator can also make additional comments about the annotations as they progress, and mark them as finished.

Working with Annotations: After an InDesign document is annotated through
WebNative Suite, an operator can view the annotations, implement the changes, and enter comments about each annotation as they are addressed in the panel above.
Second, the requested file opens in InDesign, and two new layers are added, where each annotation is created as an InDesign object in that layer. One layer contains the annotations, and a second layer provides notes and other details about each annotation.

Annotation Layers: Annotations and notes about annotations are imported
to the InDesign file as new, separate layers.
This allows the operator to quickly implement the requested changes and to hide or show the annotations by toggling layers. As the annotations are implemented (or rejected) the operator can add these notes to the Annotations tab.
Why It Does It
Annotations for InDesign saves time each and every time an operator modifies a layout document based on feedback from other people. The flexible Annotations architecture allows users to add annotations to the document using a very simple browser-based system. Users can be anywhere, and can even make annotations from mobile devices. Once the annotations are created, someone needs to implement them in the source document. Annotations for InDesign allows the operator responsible for that implementation to stay in a familiar environment and not waste screen space running a separate application or browser to view the annotations. Since the panel resides in InDesign, there is no annoying, time-consuming mouse clicking to switch between applications.
The interface has numerous features designed to allow a skilled operator to perform their job quickly and reliably. With text annotations, for example, a simple key sequence will allow the operator to flip the new corrected text for the old, preserving text box properties, rather than the dozens of mouse moves and cut-and-pastes usually required. Also, a click on the Annotations preview in the Asset Browser panel will change the visible spread of the InDesign document to the one that contains that annotation. The design is to streamline high-volume production, saving time and increasing throughput for each operator. Less wasted time means more production and quicker return on investment.
How It Works
Annotations for InDesign is built on top of the Asset Browser interface.
It consists of an InDesign plug-in, the Asset Browser application, a set of AppleScripts that draw the annotations, and a site for WebNative.
If a site has specific needs, the panel can be easily customized, but it is fully functional out of the box. Similar functionality is available for Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator users, and more applications may be available in the future. This feature is included in version 17 and later of the WebNative Suite.
|






