Tighten the loop between the copyeditor and the layout designer

May 28, 2008 3:25 PM

Other than Quark's own CopyDesk, what "story editors" exist out there that dovetail nicely with XPress 7?

We have the need to reduce the round-trip time from designer to copyeditor, and are looking for software titles, be they stand-alone apps or XTensions that would allow us to have a copy-editor be able to make changes to copy instead of marking up a printout of a layout for the designer to re-key.

I found CopyDesk, but are there others?

posted by Wild_Eep to computers & internet (2 comments total)

Should have mentioned, it's a Mac shop.
posted by Wild_Eep at 3:25 PM on May 28

This is a common task in the localization industry - extract the text, preserve the format, translate without needing Quark and reimport.

A common plugin used is CopyFlow from NAPS. This will export into an XML format that can be parsed by translation tools (TRADOS, WorldServer, SDLX). The localization tools lock the formatting allowing only editing of the text.

If you don't wish to purchase a localization tool - a developer should be able to write a simple application to show only the editable text which the editor can use to edit and save the updated file.

If you use the localization model for this process - this will allow you to extract the text, together with formatting - the copyeditor uses the translation tool to perform their edits - you then import the edited version preserving formatting.

This is a complicated but bulletproof solution.
posted by clarkie666 at 12:04 PM on May 29