The Annual is the output of a test suite. A generator opens the editor in a browser and drives it: every frame, story, swatch, table, effect and plugin object is authored through the same wire a user’s clicks travel down. A small base file carries only what that wire cannot author — master spreads, condition definitions, footnote options, a table-of-contents style and the named styles and swatches the pages address.
Each chapter asserts three things: it ran without throwing, the elements it reports exist, and the page’s pixels changed. The third is the one that matters — a chapter that authors nothing fails even when it threw nothing. A step that cannot run is written into the colophon with its reason, not left out.
Then the document leaves our hands. InDesign opens the exported IDML, renders every page to an image at the same resolution as our renders, and the two are compared pixel for pixel. That makes the Annual the strongest single proof that the whole stack works together: engine, editor, all six content plugins in one file, and an IDML that InDesign reads.
