Oh, yes indeed, it's nice to be able to open and work on another document – I appreciate the time-saving there, but the way the new 'background feature' was launched by Adobe was a bit odd if you look at some of the videos – they all seem to say things along the lines of 'you can carry on editing your document while you're exporting' or words to that effect. Apologies, having re-read my post, it seems I accused you of the saying same thing!

Thing thing I get a little hung up with is the Background tasks panel. I usually forget to have it open and then I try and close my document while it's still exporting only to be told I can't close it because it's exporting. Or I have the background tasks panel tucked away tidily so that I can't read it. I just think it's a all bit more clunky somehow. I do like cueing up a load of PDFs though, that's cool and like the old days when I used a watched folder to distil postscript files from QuarkXPress.

Don't even get me started on the way that selection tool changes to the direct selection tool every time I click too close to the centre of a small image!!!!! Grrr.

I think I need to have a day working in Quark, and I'm sure I'll shut up….

Thanks, Jongware.

I've been over there too. Most perplexing.

While I'm at it, can I ask what you think of the new 'background export' business? Personally, unless you have lots of docs open, it doesn't make any real difference. Also, I hate the Panel for it. The old progress bar was better. </rant>

Thanks for the tip David.

I've already tried the 'usual' things like throwing out the Application preferences and rebuilding them, but this didn't seem to work. I haven't done too much with the presets except for creating a new 'Test' preset which didn't help. I will try different flattening options next (PDF version etc).

Some of the circumstantial evidence from the Adobe forum suggest that it may be something to do with documents that were created with or contain elements from earlier versions of ID. I'm not so sure… as it has happened to me with a brand new document as well.

Also David, I'm curious about your workflow. Maybe I just don't get it… but how advantageous is it to be able to keep working on a document while you export it? I normally output a PDF as a proof of some kind or as a press-ready file, either way it represents a snapshot in time. If you are working on the document while exporting, surely there's a possibility of going out of sync with your versions? I suspect it's just me being unwilling to embrace the new!

Thanks Jongware and David.

Somehow, I feared that was going to be the outcome…

Anyway, I've got the job and have started making some headway in InDesign with it. I thought I'd share my progress with you and scare the bejesus out of you! I've attached two screen shots.

One shows the document size that I am working to – a staggering 4A0!

The other screen shot shows part of the first section that I have built.

For this, I elected to make object styles for 'Male' and 'Female' entries with placeholder text using various stylesheets and the very handy 'apply next style'. I then grouped these objects with a leader line coming from the top and popped the resulting groups into a library.

Fortunately, the client has requested that all children in one generation run from right to left in a neatly aligned row. This means that I can easily join the entries onto a blood line. Marriages, rather unusually have been stacked vertically so they have a tint behind to help show the union. Where there are re-marriages, the offspring are labelled with a number that corresponds to the relevant spouse – hence the green circles above some of the entries.

I've got a lot more to do as my client has really done his research and this stretches back to the 1400s! Ultimately the family tree will fill the 4A0 sized area, and to give you an idea just how much info there is, the blank 'Male' and 'Female' entries measure 34mm x 20 mm.

Naturally, the client wants it yesterday…. and for not very much money!