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Bugs bug me
September 28, 2007

I recently upgraded to Adobe Creative Suite 3 on my computers, and have enjoyed the improved speed (especially on the Intel-based Macintosh) and some of the new features (it takes me a while to discover all the new things they put in there).

I can always find them
I am bedeviled by a gift for finding bugs that make it all the way to production in almost any product. I recently found a major problem with InDesign CS3 doing something that I think should be routine. I had a seven-page document, and I needed 22 copies. I printed them to a black and white laser printer, and asked InDesign to collate the documents, and for the printer to print duplex and staple them into finished sets. All of the previous versions of InDesign printed this sort of document correctly.

Did I mention that I was on a tight deadline?
I strode quickly to the printer, grabbed the printed sets, and went to my meeting to hand them out to a waiting audience (I was a few minutes late). There was a buzz of conversation among the people in the room. I turned around and saw a lot of confusion, as people leafed-through the documents I had handed out. I took one back and looked at it, and was dumbfounded by what I saw.

InDesign had printed pages 1-7, and then, instead of printing a blank (understood) eighth page, it printed page one of the next document on the back of page seven. Then the printer stapled the result. The next copy was pages two through seven, followed by pages one and two of the third document, and so on. It was a printing disaster!

I ran back to my office and printed again, to a different printer, and got the same result. Double-disaster! So I printed one set, one-up, and ran to the office copier and printed them there.

After my meeting I set-about troubleshooting. I tested printing on a variety of devices and got the same results. Then I made a PDF and printed from Acrobat. That method also shared the same problem. My solution was to add a blank page to the back of the document, making it an even number of pages, and then printing that document.

Did all of the beta testers miss this?
It seems logical that Adobe would have tested the software when printing collated sets, but apparently they did not. I contacted their (very courteous) support staff and was told that the immediate work-around is to save to PDF and print from Acrobat. They know about it, and are working to repair it. I’m grateful, but I wonder how these things – simple, normal things – get past the professional staff, and the many beta-testers of this software. Surely I wasn’t the first person to try printing collated sets from InDesign (or was I?).

I understand the complexity of software, and the beta-testing process. I also understand when an obscure process does not work according to plan, but in this case I really don’t understand how a mainstream publishing product could fail on such a (seemingly) trivial process. Collated printing should be child’s play compared to handling transparent objects on top of opaque objects (for example), but it is something that most users do most of the time.

Perhaps my misadventure will save you some trouble.

Posted by Brian Lawler on September 28, 2007 | Comments (1)