UVa Wise>MCS>mHarvey>cg > TeX+Indd

LaTeX + InDesign

There is something wonderful about typing TeX code and then seeing it transformed into beautifully typeset mathematics. For this reason, I have been (and remain) a big fan of LaTeX. At the same time, compared to page layout programs such as Adobe's Indesign, overall page layout in LaTeX is very rigid. There are plenty of good reasons for this, and I would not argue otherwise. But, over the last year I have been experimenting with using a mixture of LaTeX and Adobe InDesign to generate documents. To those concerned with typesetting math, there is nothing revolutionary about combining the two. Still, I haven't read much online about using the two together, so I thought I would provide a brief description of the process and its limitations.

Workflow

I use Mac OS X but I do not see why this would not work on Windows. In general, The first step is to typeset the math. I do my typesetting in TeXShop. Thinking ahead to the final product, I make sure that each component that I will want to individually place is given its own page. From this, I use pdflatex to generate a PDF file. I then import into InDesign, selecting the option that allows placement of each page. I move the individual pieces around to get them arranged the way I want, and that is it. 

Limitations

I think this method works fairly great for short documents, such as pamphlets or posters. Beyond that length, I think that there will be problems with managing global changes to the text of the document. The imported PDF files are (of course) recognized as graphics rather than as text. Therefore, to implement global changes to the text, you have to go back to the original TeX file.

If you re-TeX the TeX file to make a change, InDesign will detect the change to the linked file and ask to update the links. For correcting small typos and the like, this is great. For larger changes, though, this kind of update can create problems. Most importantly, if the new text exceeds the bounds of the text box, it will be cropped off. To correct this, you have to go through manually and adjust the size of the text boxes. If corrections are going to affect the flow of text across multiple pages, then this method is going to have serious problems.

Samples

Methods of Integration
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