InDesign Interchange format
mijlee (486 points) | Fri, 2005-08-26 12:57
Corrupt file?
Bloated documents?
Need to send a big document over email?
These are all things that may occur rarely or often depending on how much you use software as complicated as InDesign. This is where the Indesign interchange format comes in.
Files hold a legacy of multiple alterations and saves and can get bogged down with surplus date that bloat files and can in some cases cause corruption. So what we need to do is strip out all that flab and create a lean, mean printing machine.
Simply open your file in InDesign and got File/Export then in the format drop down select Indesign Interchange and click save. This creates a stripped down XML version of your file with all the formatting and linking data intact. This file can now be sent to anyone else with InDesign and as long as they have all the links at their end (images, fonts etc.) they can open the file as if it were a standard INDD file.
Alternatively you can reopen it locally and re-save it as a leaner version of the original file that will be less likely to grow tiresome corruption in the future.
I have included a zipped file of how this works with the original InDesign file, a PDF for reference and and INX that I created. As you can see the InDesign file is 416k and the INX is a measly 60k.
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http://mijlee.com
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| Attachment | Size |
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| alcohol.zip | 253.55 KB |
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This is a fantastic feature! I had to use it last month when, days before deadline, our newspaper was freaking out (fonts defaulted, wouldn't change). I exported to the INX, re-opened and it was perfect!
Can I open an INX file in a older version of Indesign? Not CS, but InDesign 2?
I suppose I could understand the issue of having a bloated master file. However, compared to all of the resources required for full resolution printing the actual document itself is miniscule. I can see this being helpful as a trading tool between artists and designers but not exactly for printers. Whenever I send my files to print they are output to very specific PDF settings so they don't have to deal with a design document and a chain of resources. Another neat feature of InDesign that I really love is Package. I once had to convert a catalog to a new format (InDesign from Quark) and I had to dig through gigs and gigs of original images, saving my retouched files in the same folder. When it came time to deliver my files I didn't want to leave them with the bloated folder so I did a Package on it. It moves the working documents to a main folder and all subsequent resource files to a "Links" folder for easy parsing. Trimmed my project folder down from 6 gigs to 2 with no sweat on my part. It would have been maddening having to go through each document and remove the old images that were no longer in use.
I have worked on a major book layout for quite a while and so it happened today that the file just blew into bits and pieces out of the blue. For the top dressing, InDesign ceased functioning for good so that I had to re-install the whole software and try and start again. I exported the corrupted file as an .inx but it still crashed the whole software so I exported it the second time, and that straightened it all up - only one picture link was still in such a bad shape that it made the thing crash once again. Fortunately it allowed me to delete the picure link in question after recovery and after that it was all right. The size of the file grew from less than 80 to 100,8 MB though.
www.j-form.fi
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Design is necessary
The INX format is just Adobe using XML. Probably explains some of the bloat, though I wonder if the images then become embedded rather than placed when you export to INX?
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Powerpoint is not a design application
My latest web design work
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The Salon Design Tech
The pictures are linked. The actual .inx file was 2.7 M but when it was read back to .indd document, it was 100,8 M. I have not yet checked if it shrinks by replacing.
www.j-form.fi
.......................
Design is necessary
I wonder what's causing the file bloat?
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Powerpoint is not a design application
My latest web design work
----
The Salon Design Tech
Check this out
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/search/index.cfm?loc=en_us&term=InDesign+CS+3.0.1+April+2005&s_pageName=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.adobe.com%2Fdownloads%2F&s_channel=Channel%3An%2Fa&siteSection=downloads