You’re right, David, I do make my living using Adobe software. 95% of it is InDesign, a little Illustrator, and a little Photoshop. What used to be called Design Standard. And, how I wish I could decide whether to pay for the next upgrade cycle, or just keep the one I’ve already paid for (several times over).

When they rolled out the Creative Cloud subscriptions, Adobe promised us that, inexchange for a nonstop infusion of cash, we would get new features more often than the 18-24 month upgrade cycle. Right off the bat, we got a few upgrades. But now, it has become clear that Adobe views InDesign as a “baked” product; they are bored with it and if they do anything at all with it, it will just be trying to find ways to use it on a watch.

A lot of people I know feel this is a breach of Adobe’s contract with its users. If InDesign is a “baked” product, why keep charging us for it? Why not allow us to “opt out” and keep the version we have now, which we have already paid much more for than for any previous version?

As you say, “Even if several thousand people stopped their memberships, would Adobe even notice?” That, right there, is the problem. They do not care about those of us who use InDesign any more. To paraphrase what Eugene said, it is not sexy, and does not wow people who buy Adobe stock.

I work primarily as a subcontractor for other designers. Several of them still use CS 5.5. My clients at Harvard University use CS 5. An organization with $30 Billion in the bank can’t justify paying for the upgrades. 90% of the designers for whom I work are NOT on the creative cloud, because they simply do not see that there is enough increased value for print designers to justify the cost. I have to have CS 5, 5.5, 6, CC2014, and CC 2015 installed to support my various clients. I have tried for 2 years to get my designer clients to upgrade, with little success. Now, if anyone asks me “what will I get that I don’t already have?” I cannot honestly recommend that they upgrade. A perpetual license for CS6 would be a much better deal for most.

I get the feeling that perhaps you underestimate just how strongly people dislike the way Adobe has treated those of us who use InDesign for print work. We feel abandoned, tricked, cheated, let down. Ripped off. Victims of a massive bait-and-switch. in short, VERY unhappy with the direction of the company. Kinda like a major league ball club who just paid $75 million for a player who no longer feels he has to try. He’s got the money, why should he work?

The downside to the subscription model is that if you make people keep paying you every month, they will keep expecting something new for their money or they will feel cheated. I don’t think Adobe understood this very well, or perhaps they did but just decided it was worth ticking people off to bring in cash on a monthly basis.

We have seen this before. As the saying goes, “Adobe is the new Quark.”

As an InDesign expert for hire, I made the decision to buy the Cloud subscription and keep up on the newest features. But, I have been seriously unimpressed with the upgrades. For print designers, Adobe simply has not kept their part of the bargain. I think they are too large, and print design is such a “been there, done that” to them that they don’t see any point in improving InDesign.

So, as I said, if they are “done” with improving InDesign, why can’t we be “done” paying for it?

I don’t seriously expect people to cancel their subscriptions. That idea was born of frustration — I simply don’t know what anyone can do to make Adobe listen. If only there were an alternative, as Adobe was when we were being ignored by Quark.

@Artwork Abode: Sounds like you misunderstood the problem. I know how to make a superscript, but can’t apply multiple kinds of formatting within a section marker.

@Dwayne: thanks for the reply. Sounds like there is no easy solution here, and it’s too bad. On other occasions I have wanted to use the section marker to hold text that had an italicized book title as part of it, and again, it wouldn’t work.

Just one of those limitations of the way the software is built, I guess.

I even considered making a customized version of the typeface, with the ® smaller and shifted up, but it’s too much trouble, since this template needs to be used by both the designer and the marketing people at the product manufacturer, who create mini-catalogs on the fly and are probably using Windows machines, which may introduce other problems. So, it looks like updating the headers manually is the lesser evil.

Gotta watch out for those time-saving techniques that actually take a lot longer by the time you set them up!

I don’t know of a way to find a space before superscript, because superscript is a formatting attribute and you can’t find mixed formatting attributes (assuming you mean that the space is NOT superscripted).

But, you can use a 2-step workaround:

Step 1 is to find all superscript characters that have a space before them with GREP, using positive look behind for space characters, and in the Change field, you can insert something unique (like 2 bullets ••) before whatever is found without changing what is found. So, space+(superscript)9 would change to space••9

(i.e. you don’t look for the space – you look for the superscript characters that are preceded by a space)

Then, if you want to remove all of those spaces, you can just find all space+•• and remove them all.