Show HN: Lucidpress -- Adobe InDesign meets Google Docs | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Lucidpress -- Adobe InDesign meets Google Docs

lucidpress.com

28 pointsenuncajon7 comments

It's a bit disingenuous, perhaps even hyperbole re: the title.

- I can't upload and place tiff/eps/pdf files, so I can't use this for print. I could convert to PNG, but there ain't no CMYK PNG afaik.

- Export isn't PDFX/2000

- No printer marks/registration, all the things you want when printing.

It's a neat web app, but to call it InDesign is pretty off the mark. Maybe more like Home Desktop Publisher 2000 meets Google Docs.

EDIT:

I publish a magazine in Vietnam. Even though it's primarily iPad, we do a print run of each issue. http://facebook.com/emoimagazine (Bikinis, so NSFW sort of).

Also, the PDF export does some horrendous image crunching. I uploaded an 8.5x11 image @ 300 dpi, placed it in a document, downloaded the PDF and the compression artifacts are really noticeable.

Some of you may know our first product, Lucidchart (http://www.lucidchart.com) which is a browser-based diagramming app.

We are excited to bring that same technology to the layout and publishing space. Please let us know if you have any feedback!

This looks great. I do layout design for an old-school technology magazine, http://2600.com/. We've been using PageMaker/inDesign for decades. As a fan of LucidCharts, I'm looking forward to checking this new product of yours out.

Being able to import so we can retain some of the style our readers have become acustomed to would be AWESOME but I'm betting you all looked into inDesign's format and decided to pass that up?

Thanks for the compliments, and great question! For launch, we have not delved deeply into the bowels of InDesign's format so it's not definitively off the table -- just a prioritization of resources for now.

With Lucidchart, we are the only diagramming app that imports Microsoft Visio's native file format...so it's not unprecedented for us to tackle these types of things.

A "compromise" might be allowing uploading of a PDF doc and allow the user to specify text boxes, etc. and effectively convert the PDF into a LucidPress doc that can be used from then on.

Just an idea. Thanks for listening

Looks promising

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