FWIW, I have been using 1.3.4 after some (very little, actually) previous experience with 1.3.3.x. I checked it out because it was there, and only afterwards did its status as an unstable development version begin to become clear. This isn't made as obvious as it could be on the site, but the fact that 1.3.3.x is advertised more prominently as the stable version (and indeed, it took a little work to even figure out how to get 1.3.4) meant I was aware at *some* of the difference in status. So I currently have both versions installed - not sure if this is supposed to work well or not, but so far, having 1.3.3.9 installed has not obviously hampered my work using 1.3.4.
My current project is a CD design - a simple booklet, tray card, and the CD itself. I elected to use 1.3.4 because of the additional pre-press features with regards to bleed & registration marks. Even after realizing 1.3.4 was not intended for production use, I was OK with this decision because the project is small enough that if I need to recreate it 1.3.3.9, I know it won't take all that long. And realistically, even if 1.3.4 were fully 100% rock solid, I figure there was a good chance I'd have to hand the project off to someone else anyhow to recreate it using InDesign, since that is what the printer I'm working with prefers. They are willing to accept PDF, but frankly, while I understand basic concepts of color management, CMYK separations and so forth, I'm not completely confident I will be able to hand off a PDF that conforms 100% to the specs they are looking for. So I'm treating my work with 1.3.4 as generating a mock-up that may well need to be duplicated in another application when I'm done and if I *can* simply hand off the PDF I generate, that's just a bonus. For my project, that is a reasonable caveat to live with. I don't think I would want to do anything much larger this way, though. That said, I am finding 1.3.4 surprisingly usable. It rarely crashes, and when things don't go as I expect, I am more often than not finding it to be a case of user error. Or else, a known issue (the most frustrating of which is the fact that when copying text frames, all styles contained within it are duplicated - so I have lots of styles called "Copy of <whatever>" instead of frames sharing the same style. Every once in a while I go through and clean this up, deleting the copies styles and making the frames use the primary style instead. Plus I am getting in the habit of not using copy & paste as much as I otherwise would. As far as out-and-out bugs go, I've run into very few (and admit I haven't reported any yet, but I will). So I personally am finding 1.3.4 very nice to work with overall. But I would not recommend it for a large proejct that you would hate to have to redo. -------------- Marc Sabatella marc at outsideshore.com
