January 2008 - Incorporating Adobe InDesign documents as complete layouts within other InDesign documents was one of the great product innovations of Adobe's Creative Suite 3 last year. Now, this new feature is also supported by SoftCare K4: With its new "Layout-in-Layout" functionality, update 5.9 of the popular K4 publishing system sets a new standard in the publishing industry right at the beginning of the year. Designers are now able to place InDesign documents from K4 in other InDesign documents as often as they like. This innovation will benefit newspapers in particular, as they can use this new feature to produce regional and complete editions at the same time. SoftCare is probably the first provider who fully supports this Adobe CS3 function. Release 5.9 is available worldwide via SoftCare system integrators.
"Layout-in-Layout from K4 5.9 synchronises self-contained and hence mutually independent production processes before the copy deadline," explains Christian H. Hollstein, Product Manager for SoftCare. Thus, the regional and overall editorial board of a newspaper can produce their pages in Adobe InDesign at the same time and even continue to edit them with K4 after the layouts have been merged. This function is also especially useful for the production and placement of advertisements: Once the ad layout is complete, they can be placed in several positions in the paper using K4.
K4 5.9 also comes with a new InDesign plug-in: SoftCare Content Activator. This new feature reactivates the contents of locked frames for further processing - for example, by freelancers or external printing service providers. SoftCare Content Activator is also available as a free download.
"To make K4 even more user-friendly, we incorporated a lot of suggestions for improvement from our users in version 5.9," Hollstein continues. Several items, such as pictures, Word files or Excel spreadsheets can now be checked in and out at the same time using K4 File Manager. In addition to the issue-based mode, K4 Admin now enables users to export items, such as layouts, articles or pictures based on a query. A particularly interesting feature for new users: the K4 Client's help commands offer direct access to the K4 Quick Reference Cards, making it easy for K4 users to call up the symbol overview at any time.