Manuscripts are frequently written in Google Docs. DocsFlow is a plugin for InDesign which dramatically improves the interoperability of the GDOC and INDD formats.1 In particular, it adds dynamic linking of content from GDOCs in a way that closely resembles Adobe’s own ICML format. The following is my current workflow for laying out manuscripts from Google Docs via DocsFlow. It draws heavily from the official DocsFlow user guide. Be sure to check it out for more exhaustive step-by-step walk-throughs.
Most typsetting consists of adding graphical formatting to a (mostly) unformatted text manuscript. It is important to understand that these are two different kinds of information. The manuscript is (basically) just text. The formatting data specifies things like font, size, images, etc.. Modern text editors and design programs do a great job seamlessly abstracting away this distinction, but it is important to keep this in mind when using a tool like DocsFlow.
What DocsFlow does is maintain the text content in the GDOC separate from the INDD. This way, content changes can be made in Google Docs even after typsetting in InDesign. However, this functionality does not come without its drawbacks. To avoid lots of weird unexpected behavior, it is best to make content (text) changes in the GDOC whenever possible.
DocsFlow supports one InDesign story per GDOC. You may need to thread text frames around content not managed by DocsFlow. Cover, title, table of contents, and other pages will need to be added separately.
In the DocsFlow place menu, be sure Show import options
and Link to document are selected. Then add mappings for
italic, semibold, and semibold-italic character styles in the subsequent
import options. For most everything else, the defaults are the most
sensible. You may want to add paragraph style mappings for headings
depending on your InDesign stylesheet.
As we established prior, content should be edited in Google Docs whenever possible. Other than that, the typsetting workflow is essentially unchanged.
Once the INDD is ready for proofing, a preview link should be sent via Share for Review. The corrections workflow is simple:
The creators of DocsFlow, Em Software, have also created an equivalent plugin for Microsoft Word called WordsFlow.↩︎