DM Adieu Design — Support
DM Adieu Design is a page-layout app for the Mac: spreads, frames, styles, a paragraph composer and press-ready PDF, in a native app that runs entirely on your Mac. It is built on DesignCraft, the open-source page-layout app by the ArtCraft team, which Dependent Media packages, sandboxes and supports for the Mac App Store.
Getting started
Choose Help › Sample Document to open a finished four-page magazine and look around. To start your own, click New file on the Home screen or choose File › New › Document, pick a size, then draw a text frame with the Type tool and start typing. File › Place adds a picture or a text file; the Properties panel on the right shows the settings of whatever is selected.
Opening and saving files
Use File › Open, drag a document onto the window, or double-click it in the Finder. The app opens its own .designcraft documents and IDML interchange files. File › Save (⌘S) writes a .designcraft document that holds the layout and every placed picture. File › Export PDF, Export Page as PNG, Export EPUB, Export HTML and Export IDML write a copy for print, screen or another app.
Because the app is sandboxed, it can only read and write files you choose yourself: through the Open, Place and Save dialogs, by dragging them onto the window, or from the Finder. Documents and pictures you have opened, placed or saved stay available after a restart, so a document the app recovers after a crash saves back to its own file. If macOS ever refuses to save a document in its old place, Save asks where to save it instead.
Pictures and fonts
Placed pictures are kept inside the document, so it opens anywhere, and the Links panel remembers where each one came from. Relink to Folder can only see the file you choose in the sandbox, not the rest of the folder: choose each moved picture with Relink… instead. Fonts that come with macOS and fonts you install with Font Book are ready to use. Fonts in a Document Fonts folder next to a document are not loaded by the App Store version, because the sandbox cannot reach that folder: install them with Font Book instead.
Books, data merge and packages
A book (.dcbook) and a data-merge source are files you choose, and they work as usual. A book’s chapters live in their own files: if one will not open after a restart, open it once with File › Open. File › Package creates the folder you name and gathers the document, its pictures, its fonts (where their licences allow) and an IDML copy into it.
Printing
File › Print (⌘P) lists the printers set up on your Mac, with copies and the page range. The pages go to the macOS printing system as PDF, like any other app’s.
What is still rough
The app it is built on is young and under heavy development. Interchange files from other apps may not open exactly as they were made, and some panels and dialogs are still rough. Updates arrive often. If something breaks, save your work, then tell us which file, what was selected and what you were doing.
Contact
Email [email protected] or use the contact form. Include your macOS version and the app version from DM Adieu Design › About DM Adieu Design.