January 20, 2010

How to Create Dynamic InCopy Article Templates Inside of K4

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Creating professional InDesign templates is a task that requires great thought and deep insight into the ways that Styles, Master Pages, and Libraries can seamlessly work together. However, once you've overcome that hurdle, it is quite easy to check your InDesign document into the "Template" issue. Once the template has been checked into that issue, a production artist can easily choose K4Layout > New Layout from Template. This makes it easier to control who builds the templates, who updates the templates, and what pages are templated. By storing the templates in the database, you can ensure that every time you create a new document from a template, all the items you need are present. You can also be assured that the document Preferences and Tool settings are always the same.

To create an InCopy article template within K4 can be a bit more challenging, but in a different way. Since you've already defined your Styles within InDesign, you've already accomplished the most challenging part. Now you must decide what you want the article templates to look like as editors begin typing or pasting their text into InCopy. Do you want to make an InCopy article template that looks just like the page it needs to flow into? Or would you prefer a simpler approach? These next sections explore both.

The simple approach is to just open a new document inside of InCopy and make the width of the page the same size as a column within your publication. Next, load the paragraph styles from your InDesign document into your InCopy document. By loading the paragraph and character styles into the InCopy template, the editors will be able to input their story in the correct style.

The next step would be to put some "dummy" type on the page such as "Type Headline Here." Then you can apply the correct Paragraph or Character Style to the type. Building a simple template like this one would be quick and easy. It would guarantee that an editor could accurately type in the correct style and be aware of their word count, line count and also have a depth ruler to measure the column inches. This is how a standard InCopy and InDesign workflow could be setup using just the standard InCopy Bridge plug-ins. The limitation is that "Layout" view doesn't resemble the actual layout. It will appear more like type on a blank page within a column.

One downside to using column based templates is that the rest of the page appears blank.

However, with a little know-how you can create very specific, design-oriented templates for your InCopy articles. Think of a certain section of your publication. Now think of the different ways you might layout that section. Maybe you always have it as a two column layout? Maybe sometimes the layout is horizontal, and other times it's vertical. You could make two different InCopy article templates that look exactly like the section the editor is suppose to write inside of. This would enable the writer to try to fill the space that was given to them, and see how the text would appear in the actual layouts. This would bring the editor out of the word processing mind set and into the "Layout" mindset - literally. Editors could now use the "Layout" view inside of InCopy to type their stories on what looks like the actual page it will run on. Now here's how to do it!

1. Open up your InDesign template inside of whatever version of InDesign you have.

Choose K4 Layout > Check in Layout if you are using K4 version 5. For K4 version 6 choose "Initiate Workflow." Do not check "Available as Template," you don't want this InDesign document to be available as a template, you only want to use the article as a template. Furthermore, the trick is to not have the article directly linked to this template or the InDesign document will update (You don't want this to happen, you need the template to remain unattached to the article).

Make sure you don't check "Available as Template."

2. Choose "Template" as the Issue, and "Check In" the document in Version 5. "Initiate the Workflow" in version 6. Give the document a name.

Make sure to choose template as the issue.

3. Now open up a Query and search for documents that are in the issue "Template." In version 5, check out the document you just created. In version 6, "Accept the Task."

4. If you haven't already done it, place the text frames on the page you want the editors to type into. Be mindful of which kind of article template you are about to create. Place your "dummy" text on the page as needed. Either use columns to control the flow of text, or make sure the text boxes are linked.

Make sure to plan your layouts correctly. Use "dummy" text to help the editors know what style they should be using.

5. From the K4Layout menu, choose "New Article." Select whichever option is most appropriate. Either the frames that you've selected, a layer that contains the text, or all text frames. Click "OK" when you're finished.

6. In version 5, choose "Check-In Article." In version 6, choose "Initiate Workflow" for the article. When the dialogue box opens, choose "Template" for the Issue. Make sure you check "Available as Template." Now you can "Check-In" the document (5), or "Initiate the Workflow (6)." Make sure you name your document correctly. It should reflect the section name and layout positioning.

7. You can now "Undo your Checkout (5), or "Un-accept the Task" (6), for your InDesign document. By not checking this document into the K4 system at this juncture, you sever the connection between this document and the article.

8. To see if you were successful, launch InCopy and choose K4Edit > New Article from template.

9. Give the document a name. The article you built should be listed. Once you choose and open this article in Layout mode, it will have the same look and feel as the InDesign document!

The editor can now populate the text frames as needed. The amazing part is that once the article is placed onto an InDesign page, and that InDesign page is saved or checked-in, the geometry of the article will update to reflect the page the story now resides on, and not the article template you built. Once the article's geometry is updated in InCopy, even if someone is still working on the article, they will see the actual issue they are working on and not the template issue.

This may seem like a lot of work, but planning out InCopy templates and putting them in the system is the only time consuming part. If you do this extra-work on the front-end, your workflow will be that much more streamlined on the back-end.

Posted at 12:36 pm by Robert Underwood

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