InDesign style sheets

[helene silverman]

This seems to work very differently than Quark did. I can't understand why it often won't let me style text—it just stays the same with a plus. Actually the whole thing is a mystery to me. It seems that sometimes I get it to a point where I feel like I have to trash the whole file to get the style sheets to work. All kinds of crazy wrong things happen, like whatever style I apply it just applies the same wrong one to everything. Also my paragraph default is stuck on a certain setting so everytime I make a text box it has an indent etc already on it. Sorry for not being able to take the time to really learn this now, I'm just kind of frustrated and in a work crunch.

Thanks
Helene

[Adrian]

Helene,

Have you investigated the difference between the Paragraph and Paragraph Styles palettes in the Type menu? The former should let you change only the paragraph you're working on.

Best wishes, Adrian

[helene silverman]

Hi Adrian,

I do know that. I change it, then when I put a new empty text box down, it reverts to the indented version over and over again. Its just part of what I dont understand thats different than Quark.

Helene

[lefkoff]

Try to option click the style sheet in the Style Sheets Palette. It will delete any other styling you have on that paragraph and use only what is defined in the style sheet that you have defined when you option click on it.

One thing that might help is start the Indesign program. Make sure no Indesign files are open. Now set everything the way you want it. This will create new defaults for the program.

[helene silverman]

hi,

That sounds promising, I'll try it. I will also, when i have time, really learn what the #$%& its really all about ;-)

[donmcc]

If you are having more transition problems than just this, I suggest you get a copy of the Adobe Classroom in a book for your version of ID. I had used Quark and PageMaker for years, but found getting into ID was frustrating, until I got the book. I didn't work through all the exercises, but found I could skim a chapter and find out how to do what I needed.

A good investment, overall.

Don McCahill

[terrie]

You might want to take a look at this thread (http://www.desktoppublishingforum.com/bb/showthread.php?t=983) as there are some other book suggestions there too...

Terrie

[marlene]

I will also, when i have time, really learn what the #$%& its really all about ;-)

And when you find out, let me know! <g>

I'm in the same boat -- trying to learn InDesign after years of Quarking.

I did learn the Option-click trick for applying paragraph styles recently (actually it's Alt-click for me since I'm on PC), and it's changed my life.

But I didn't change my basic paragraph defaults until just this minute, after reading this thread. <g>

It's been frustrating, because it takes me much longer to do a project in ID than it would in Quark, but I really have to get a grip on ID whether I like it or not. All the jobs I do for one of my clients need to be in ID, so I am very slowly learning. But I'm finding that I have a lot of trouble remembering how to do things even after I've learned them.

It wasn't a problem when I was younger!

mxh

[Shane Stanley]

One of the biggest traps with InDesign is the way imports work. The key is to make sure that the default paragraph style and character style are not accidentally set to other than the "[No .... Style]" styles, otherwise the selected style is applied to all the imported text, and becomes a real pain to remove.

It's very easy to do accidentally; get into the habit of always clicking back on "[No .... Style]" after editing a style.

Shane

[Eggles]

Other than Shane's suggestion, you might also be having a problem because you are bringing in text (from example, Word) that already has some sort of styles applied and they are conflicting with IDs. I have found that it is best to strip all formatting from Word documents first by saving it to a TXT format (in Word) and then applying all formatting using paragraph and character styles once it has been placed in in ID.

[Michael Rowley]

Eggles:

already has some sort of styles applied and they are conflicting with IDs

I thought that InDesign's styles will automatically supersede Word's if they have the same name (such as 'Body text'), but if they do not they are preserved, providing InDesign has the same features.

By the way, Word has been equipped with a 'Remove all formatting' instruction since Word 10, so your method, which would be many people's, would be going to a lot of trouble for nothing (as well as infuriating the unfortunate author, who may have spent hours deciding whether 'Doppelgänger'—say—should be in italics or not).

[Eggles]

I thought that InDesign's styles will automatically supersede Word's if they have the same name (such as 'Body text'), but if they do not they are preserved, providing InDesign has the same features.

Michael

I'm not sure how ID would handle a Word style coming in with the same name as one already specified in ID - I don't take that chance. Back when I was using Pagemaker, if a Word style had the same name as a PM style, often both were added to the Styles palette. Very confusing and a possible source of document corruption.

By the way, Word has been equipped with a 'Remove all formatting' instruction since Word 10, so your method, which would be many people's, would be going to a lot of trouble for nothing (as well as infuriating the unfortunate author, who may have spent hours deciding whether 'Doppelgänger'—say—should be in italics or not).

Are you referring to Word or Wordperfect? I've never heard of any version of Microsoft Word being called Word 10. It usually goes by a version name such as Word 97 or Word 2000 or Word 2002 etc. So if you are referring to a feature of Wordperfect, how is this any different to saving a Word doc as a TXT file?

I do not agree that removing all formatting before placement of the Word file in the page layout and then reapplying styles is 'going to a lot of trouble for nothing'. My experience with authors has been that they are remarkably inconsistent in their application of formatting (understandable if it has been written over a period of time) and I would prefer to know it has been done consistently by formatting the document myself. As for infuriating the author - they would never know - as I always am guided by a hard copy print out of their Word file anyway, so there are no misunderstandings. I have done the layout for many issues of a ornithological magazine, full of italicised scientific (genus and species) names, so I have had plenty of practice.

[Michael Rowley]

Eggles:

if a Word style had the same name as a PM style, often both were added to the Styles palette

I have only read in InDesign Help that it will only preserve Word styles if they haven't the same names as ID styles, and that struck me as reasonable behaviour and consistent with FrameMaker's behaviour; I have never used PageMaker.

Many Word users never make use of styles and do not know what they are: but many make full use of them, and use them consistently. It should be obvious from the document which of those policies the author is using.

I've never heard of any version of Microsoft Word being called Word 10

I'm sorry to have confused you, but it wasn't until Word for Windows 7 that Microsoft sales' people decided to call Windows 4 '95' etc. that Word (no longer 'for Windows') was to be called Word 95. All the DOS Word versions had numbers (from 1 to 6), and Word for Windows versions were 1, 2, and 6; I don't know how the Mac Words fitted in, but there was a Mac Word 6 and a more or less equivalent Windows Word 6. Word 95 was v. 7 (different OS from Word 6, but the same format), Word 97 was v. 8, Word 2000 was v. 9, Word XP was v. 10, Word 2003 is v. 11. Version 12, coming 'soon' hasn't got a sales name yet.

I have done the layout for many issues of a ornithological magazine, full of italicised scientific (genus and species) names

I purposely didn't choose a genus or species name as my example, because there's no argument about those. But in chemistry (my own field), it would be an unusual typesetter that would know instinctively whether a prefix was to be italicized, or in small capitals, etc. Also, in scientific symbols there is a differentiation of faces; e.g. is it f or f? It all depends. Biological binomials are easy-peasy in comparison. Outside those scientific fields, there are other considerations, and the precise formatting is very much dependent on the author's (or rather, his editor's) opinion, not the designer's or typesetter's.

I have had plenty of practice

Well, practice makes perfect, they say!

[marlene]

I'm trying to find a way to replace Word styles for text attributes (bolds, italics, etc.) with codes that InDesign will recognize, and then save the Word file as TXT before importing into ID.

For the type of work I do, it's essential that the font attributes are unchanged (by me). And there's no way I want to go through every line of text in ID and re-apply the attributes.

Until I figure out how to do this (code the attributes in Word), I have to import the Word text with styles intact, which can be a real mess.

It's especially irritating since I was easily able to code my Word files for import into Quark -- I just can't figure out how to do it for ID.

mxh

[Michael Rowley]

Marlene:

codes that InDesign will recognize

What sort of code will InDesign recognize? I've just been rereading (for the umteenth time) ID v. 3's Help, & although you can preserve Word styles in ID (if they haven't the same names as any ID style) or choose not to keep them (which raise the question of why choose 'text' in Word), it's not clear how individual words or phrases can be kept to bold, italic, etc. if the paragraph style isn't bold, italic, etc.

One way of labelling text in Word is to use its find & replace function: you could, for example, find all italic words and put an asterisk in front of them; then in ID you could replace the italic and remove the asterisk. ID wouldn't be 'recognizing' those words, but it would be quicker than going through the text and restoring the italic individually.

[Mike]

it's not clear how individual words or phrases can be kept to bold, italic, etc. if the paragraph style isn't bold, italic, etc.

I think it may depend upon how the style is applied in Word. I recently imported an author's Word document into ID and although most of the italics survived, some didn't. I don't remember now exactly why the problem arose but seem to remeber it having something to do with font substitution.

[Adrian]

Mike,

I think that this is most likely because the "failed" italics were created by simply pressing the italic button in Word, rather than by applying an italic font, or an italic character style.

Best wishes, Adrian

[Mike]

I think that this is most likely because the "failed" italics were created by simply pressing the italic button in Word, rather than by applying an italic font, or an italic character style.


Could well have been. This particular author had a habit of being quite inconsistent -- e.g. randomly applying character formatting to whole paragraphs to maske them look identical to other paragraphs that he'd used a paragraph style for. So well I did a 'select all' and applied my body text paragraph style in ID, most but not all of the paragraphs ended up formatted correctly.

[Michael Rowley]

Mike:

I think it may depend upon how the style is applied in Word

Although the common way of applying bold, bold italic, or italic in (Windows) Word is to make use of the links to those styles, which is generally quickest, you can do it through a Word 'character style'; you would have to do that if there is no link; for instance, there is no link that can change l.c. into s.c., so you'd have to change to a font that has s.c. But it seems to me that Word doesn't preserve either a character style applied deliberately (e.g. 'character style s.c.') or a character style (italic, say) applied by means of pressing Ctrl+I if:

you change the underlying style of the paragraph;
you instruct Word to 'Remove character formatting' by pressing Ctrl+spacebar.

If you should import a Word document into InDesign, we know that the paragraph style will be changed if it has the same name as an ID style (and that style isn't the same as the Word style); however, does it change 'overrides'?

If the character style changes because of font substitution in ID, the substitution will be signalled by ID. That should generally be rare, since presumably the author of the Word document will have used common fonts—but if it is not one that's common to Windows Word and Mac Word, there could be trouble.

[Mike]

That should generally be rare, since presumably the author of the Word document will have used common fonts—but if it is not one that's common to Windows Word and Mac Word, there could be trouble.

Goodness knows. I suspect they generally use Times New Roman (which isn't installed on this Mac) but I did have one author present everything in Comic Sans and request that the book should be set similarly.

Goodness knows what the last one I did was done with -- I imported the Word file (presumably created in Windows Word) into ID and found most of it in 18 point Times -- which wasn't what his hard copy was printed in. Actually, come to think of it, he was the translator rather than the author and his English wasn't any better than his typing.

[terrie]

>>marlene: I'm trying to find a way to replace Word styles for text attributes (bolds, italics, etc.) with codes that InDesign will recognize, and then save the Word file as TXT before importing into ID.

Have you tried saving as an RTF?

Terrie

[Michael Rowley]

Mike:

I suspect they generally use Times New Roman (which isn't installed on this Mac)

I think too that many people do use Times New Roman, as it is the preset default for 'Normal' style (many people use Normal style all the time, and set anything else manually; they also use blind paragraphs to get space between paragraphs or even position stuff on the page). But the Mac has Times Roman as the equivalent of TNR, and Helvetica as the equivalent of Arial. Quite a few fonts are common to the Mac and Windows though, including Georgia, a very useful typeface. Comic Sans should be forbidden!

Well, perhaps he was a very short-sighted translator, and probably quite old, as many translators are. He should know enough about his program though to display everything at 200% magnification—the same as I do: then he can use 10 pt or even 8 pt fonts and see them clearly.

he was the translator rather than the author and his English wasn't any better than his typing

The translator is the author as far as his publisher and everyone else is concerned: he's the one that signs the contract. But he clearly was not an ITI or ATA member!

By the way, I've found that changing the paragraph style does not affect character styles, so it's not clear why some of them should disappear in InDesign. The options InDesign offers is to import a Word document with or without formatting.

[donmcc]

I was thinking this as well, but RTF is difficult to search and replace. The system does not use end tags. It uses an open brace, then a code, and the code dies with an end brace. And of course everything ends with end braces, so you cannot use that to replace.

Of course, it is possible that the italics will come through if an rtf file is imported, where it may not in the doc format. (Although I have never had a problem with italics not coming in when I import a Word file.)

Don McCahill

[marlene]

One of the biggest traps with InDesign is the way imports work. The key is to make sure that the default paragraph style and character style are not accidentally set to other than the "[No .... Style]" styles, otherwise the selected style is applied to all the imported text, and becomes a real pain to remove.

Actually, I have the opposite problem (if I'm understanding this correctly). When I want to import text using an existing style sheet, I haven't had much luck getting it to work. If I apply the style sheet after importing, I lose my bolds and italics.

mxh

[marlene]

Have you tried saving as an RTF?

Yes, but that doesn't solve the problem. I don't want to import the Word paragraph styles, and an RTF preserves those styles. All I want is plain text EXCEPT with the bolds and italics intact.

mxh

[marlene]

What sort of code will InDesign recognize? I've just been rereading (for the umteenth time) ID v. 3's Help, & although you can preserve Word styles in ID (if they haven't the same names as any ID style) or choose not to keep them (which raise the question of why choose 'text' in Word), it's not clear how individual words or phrases can be kept to bold, italic, etc. if the paragraph style isn't bold, italic, etc.

I was hoping that ID would work the way Quark does -- for example, if I replace all italic codes in Word with the <I> Xpress tag (as a toggle, so it goes at the beginning at end of each italic work), it imports into Quark perfectly. I can't figure out if ID has anything similar.

If not, it should!

One way of labelling text in Word is to use its find & replace function: you could, for example, find all italic words and put an asterisk in front of them; then in ID you could replace the italic and remove the asterisk. ID wouldn't be 'recognizing' those words, but it would be quicker than going through the text and restoring the italic individually.

That would take WAY too much time. Some of these projects are large, and have literally hundreds of italic and/or bold words sprinkled throughout.

It would be quicker to import the text into Quark (using my existing Word macros that replace Word codes with Xpress tags) and then convert to ID!

mxh

[Shane Stanley]

Actually, I have the opposite problem (if I'm understanding this correctly).

No, you could well be having this problem -- it's only apparent when you go to apply another style, when you lose the bold and italics.

Shane

[Michael Rowley]

Marlene:

I was hoping that ID would work the way Quark does

Apparently, InDesign does't: it either offers to keep all formatting, or none. I don't know how Quark XPress did it, distinguishing between the codes, I mean: what ID does is more understandable.

That would take WAY too much time

I don't think it would take more than a few minutes: Word's 'Replace all' instruction works pretty fast. But it would be quickest to change all the paragraph formatting to the format of one type of paragraph (perhaps 'Normal') before importing into ID. If ID has a 'Normal' format, you'd get everything the way you want it.

Let's face it: Word is what most authors write in and editors edit, so if you don't know how it works, you have to rely on InDesign's (or Quark's etc.) import facilities. There are many things in a Word document that ID desn't take any notice of, but the list of features it does support is much longer; there is a complete account of both in ID Help.

[terrie]

>>donmcc: Of course, it is possible that the italics will come through if an rtf file is imported, where it may not in the doc format. (Although I have never had a problem with italics not coming in when I import a Word file.)

It's not something I've tested and I have very little experience with working with Word files to ID--actually, now that I think about it, I've *never* done it...as the text files I was sent had been saved as RTF's and I opened them in WordPad. The text had at least some of the formatting saved. I had requested .rtf files because the system being used by the magazine was some mac format (clarisworks?) and I couldn't open them at all.

Using .rtf turned out to be a reasonable compromise.

Terrie

[terrie]

>>marlene: and an RTF preserves those styles. All I want is plain text EXCEPT with the bolds and italics intact.

Bummer...I figured you'd tried rtf but thought I'd offer it just in case...

On last thought...have you tried opening the .rtf's in WordPad and then cutting and pasting or even saving again as a new .rtf and then opening in ID???

Terrie

[Michael Rowley]

Marlene:

I don't want to import the Word paragraph styles

What is it about imported Word paragraph styles that you don't like? To a frequent Word user, the request for paragraph styles that don't contain anything objectionable is reasonable: Word can do vanilla easily, and if you've got a copy of Word, it is a simple matter to change every paragraph to 'vanilla' is easy, requiring one keystroke.

If you haven't got a copy of Word, it is presumably also easy to convert every paragraph to the Quark etc. version of 'vanilla'. So why all the faffing about, converting to text etc.?

To me, who has to struggle to understand InDesign & Co. (FrameMaker's more straightforward), the desire for complication is inexplicable.

[marlene]

you could well be having this problem

Probably so. I haven't used ID in a couple of days, so I'm already forgetting what I did and how.

I'll have to tackle the issues again next time I use it.

mxh

[marlene]

I don't think it would take more than a few minutes: Word's 'Replace all' instruction works pretty fast. But it would be quickest to change all the paragraph formatting to the format of one type of paragraph (perhaps 'Normal') before importing into ID. If ID has a 'Normal' format, you'd get everything the way you want it.

What would be time-consuming would be going through the ID file (searching for the asterisk, or whatever code I used to indicate italic, for example) and making the text italic and then deleting the code.

I do like the idea of changing all the text in a Word file to one paragraph style (assuming I could do that and NOT wipe out the italics and bold) before importing into ID. I wonder if that would actually work.

Too tired to try it now!

mxh

[marlene]

What is it about imported Word paragraph styles that you don't like? To a frequent Word user, the request for paragraph styles that don't contain anything objectionable is reasonable: Word can do vanilla easily, and if you've got a copy of Word, it is a simple matter to change every paragraph to 'vanilla' is easy, requiring one keystroke.

What I don't like about importing Word's paragraph styles is the fact that most of my clients make a mess out of their Word files -- they must spend hours (or days) styling them, but they do it badly. A recent Word file had at least 4 or 5 different paragraph styles that were identical, or at least similar, that they used on their basic body text.

And they had several levels of subheads (there should only be two).

If, as you suggest, I can just change all the text in my Word file to one style (without losing italics, bolds, etc.), that would probably float my boat.

the desire for complication is inexplicable.

Although I'll admit that setting up my Word macros to create Xpress tags was complicated (so complicated that I got someone in the CIS Word forum to help me!), once it was done, I could run one big honkin' macro on a Word file, save it as a plain text file with an .xtg extension, and import it into Quark with bolds, italics, bullets, superscripts, etc., intact. My macro also gets reduces multiple wordspaces to one space, multiple tabs to one tab, and other bits of housekeeping.

Just the bullet aspect was no easy task, since my clients used many different characters for bullets -- I still occasionally have to update the macro when a client starts using some new bullet character (a curly leaf or pointing hand). My macro converts Word's auto-numbering (and auto-bulleting) to "hard" numbers or bullets.

This saves me hours of time -- I do a magazine every month, and every single article is supplied as a separate Word file. I just run my super-macro on each file, and it cleans up most -- if not all -- of the client-induced junk.

And I still have my precious bolds and italics!

mxh

[marlene]

On last thought...have you tried opening the .rtf's in WordPad and then cutting and pasting or even saving again as a new .rtf and then opening in ID???

LOL! No, I haven't tried that. I get dozens of Word files every month, and if I have to go through a lot of rigamarole on each one -- opening in different apps, cutting and pasting, resaving, etc. -- it's really going to slow down production.

For the current issue of the magazine I produce each month, I received at least 30 Word files. As long as I keep doing the magazine in Quark I'm fine -- I can use my fabulous Word macro and get nice clean text -- but if I ever have to switch the project to ID, I'm doomed.

mxh

[Michael Rowley]

Marlene:

Although I'll admit that setting up my Word macros

Ah! And I thought that tagging the italic etc. was a clever Quark facility. Perhaps you could find someone to modify your macro for InDesign. It is easy to 'Select all' in Word, then convert all paragraph styles to one simple style; I thought that might remove the overrides on the specially formatted words, but that was only because of a habit of mine of pressing once to remove stray paragraph styles and once to remove character styles.

Microsoft could be criticized for calling the basic style 'Normal', although somewhere it says that your usual text should not be 'Normal' but 'Body text'; Normal is just for basic stuff such as text font, size, and leading—and language, which is important (half the UK users turn out stuff that's labelled 'US English' and wonder why the spelling checker changes some of the spelling).

[terrie]

>>marlene: LOL! No, I haven't tried that. I get dozens of Word files every month, and if I have to go through a lot of rigamarole on each one -- opening in different apps, cutting and pasting, resaving, etc. -- it's really going to slow down production.

I can understand that...was just wondering if it might work...

Terrie

[terrie]

Marlene...found Knowbody Smart Paste CS+CS2 - 3.0.6 (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/win/28932)

Here's the info from the page:

>>Product Description:
This little plugin enables you to copy text from your clipboad. By default Word text would be read as RTF and you would have a mess in your styles menu. This small utility is only one extra menuitem under the editmenu, but it changes the world for you. It copies the bold, italic etc but uses you InDesign styles! No redefinition or creation of bad word styles any longer!
What's new in this version:


Completly redesigned program
This updated version now lets you specify shortcuts for the paste function in 2 ways: First you can smart paste using the popup menu. But now you can also smart paste and use the previeus settings in the popup menu. <<

Terrie

[Michael Rowley]

Terrie:

That program seems to provide for $50 what InDesign v. 3 provides for imported Word files, except for the copying feature. But you can copy matter from Word without carrying over the paragraph style if you avoid copying the paragraph marks. I suppose InDesign CS2 offers the same import filters as in v. 3.

[terrie]

>>michael: That program seems to provide for $50 what InDesign v. 3 provides for imported Word files

Ahhh...well...nevermind...'-}}

Terrie

[BradW]

qXport 3 (http://www.bitmix.de/english/) can convert formatted Word files to XPress Tags or InDesign Tags on both Mac and Windows platforms. I believe there's a demo version.

qXport was created by former DTP Forum sysop Thomas Kaltschmidt, btw.

Brad

[Michael Rowley]

Brad:

qXport 3 . . . can convert formatted Word files to XPress Tags or InDesign Tags

I'm sure it can, but I'd question the need to: Marlene says you can convert Word to XPress tags, using a VBA macro, and InDesign 3 already accepts Word styles (presumably through its own tags). I should have to be convinced those methods don't work before shelling out another $99.

[BradW]

I'm not the one having a problem; I'm just pointing out a way to get Word converted to ID tags without having to rewrite her macros. And if she regularly bills $50 an hour, qXport would pay for itself if it takes her more than two hours to do so.

Since I pre-process all files before bringing them into XPress or InDesign, I maintain up-to-date licenses for both qXport and QuarkConverter. (And in case anyone wonders, yes, I paid for them both.)

Brad

[Michael Rowley]

Brad:

I'm not the one having a problem; I'm just pointing out a way to get Word converted to ID tags without having to rewrite her macros

I know you're not, and modifying a VBA macro & making it work might take more than twon hours. I was just querying the need to predigest Word files for InDesign; it might not convert them very well, of course: I don't know.

It's always advisable to clean up Word files that have been made by someone else (one's own are perfect, of course), but that's not very complicated if you're reasonably competent in VBA, which I assume most DTP experts are—I'm not: Word Basic was my limit.

[BradW]

For XPress, I like to add a lot of discretionary returns to the text stream to help break Web site addresses and around em and en dashes, so I'll always pre-process files. I'm working on a 1200-page project now in which I added 15 units of kerning between closed quotation marks and footnote references, for another example.

InDesign's optical kerning and generally more sophisticated H&J engine precludes the need to do a lot of these things. But there will always be things I need or want to change having to do with paragraph and character styles. Until one of these programs intelligently handles the removal of space before a head when it immediately follows another head, I'll no doubt want to change the second head to a different style.

For the most part, I'm avoiding the more cumbersome ID tags by sticking with XPress tags and using Xtags for InDesign to import my massaged text into ID.

Brad

[Michael Rowley]

Brad:

I added 15 units of kerning between closed quotation marks and footnote references

You've lost me there. I suppose you're numbering the footnotes, not using reference marks such as * and †, but are you actually kerning to make them closer, or increasing the character space to make them stand out more?

handles the removal of space before a head when it immediately follows another head

FrameMaker will ignore 'space after' and 'space before' in that situation, but whether or not you regard that as 'intelligent' depends, I suppose, on personal taste. I often find it adequate.

[BradW]

Yep, they're numbered footnotes: one 20-page section had 124 of them! I found the spacing between quotation marks and footnote references to be too tight, so I opened the kerning by 15 units (<k15>”<k0><@footnote ref>). Conversely, I wanted to close up the space between commas and periods followed by footnote refs (<k-15>.<k0><@footnote ref>).

And I'm not at all surprised FrameMaker automatically handles spacing between consecutive heads. Since XPress and InDesign don't, I generally have a "B head first" or "C head after B" style at the ready to use in such cases. But since I'm already translating the text files, I tend to try to automate that, too.

Brad

[Michael Rowley]

Brad:

I found the spacing between quotation marks and footnote references to be too tight

That sounds very sensible, as does the need to decrease the gap between punctuation on the line and superior numbers—very much as Dowding was advocating! But I'm trying to think of a book with many quotations and footnotes, and I'm stuck—too little imagination.

And I'm surprised that InDesign hasn't thought of the problem. Word 11 (and possibly 10) has an option to suppress extra space between paragraphs with the same style (and I can't imagine what that is for), but otherwise offers no solution when two headings follow each other; perhaps Word takes the view that it shouldn't happen, which some people maintain. But whatever you decide about making space before and after so that your text lines up, you are faced with a problem when one of the spaces is omitted, as it usually is at the top of the page.

[ktinkel]

Word 11 (and possibly 10) has an option to suppress extra space between paragraphs with the same style …I know you do a lot with Word, but how do you control the word spacing?

I can’t figure that out, and without that control all the kerning, space before/after, and other doodads cannot make a lot of difference.

Or am I just way behind the times?

[Michael Rowley]

KT:

how do you control the word spacing?

Usually I don't use justified paragraphs, so I get the standard space, which of course is set by whoever designed the digitized font; this doesn't depart much from em/4, the 'middle space'. If I do justify, I use 'WordPerfect justification', an option in Word. I don't know the what the minimum space is that that allows, but it's not an extreme value—about 70%, I imagine. The same goes for the maximum space aimed for. As to hyphenation (which I use whether I justify or not), Word's algorithms and dictionaries are no better or worse than anyone else's. Of course, justification in Word is on a line-by-line basis; I make no attempt to impose a rule, such as 'no more than two consecutive hyphenated lines', because it can result in large gaps in the line or lines following, but if there are too many hyphens I turn off hyphenation for that paragraph and then sort out the hyphenations manually.

If I know that a document is going to be dealt with by something like FrameMaker, I leave H&J to that. I know that InDesign has an (optional) system of H&J by whole paragraphs, but I haven't yet used ID in anger, partly because I abhor the 'pasteboard' approach.

Kerning, by the way, I never switch on for text—I'm rather sceptical about its utiliity in text sizes. But kerning etc. have no relevance to the 'space before' and 'space after' setting of paragraphs. As I usually use the A4 format, and therefore prefer to have two colums, getting the columns balanced is often a problem.

[BradW]

But I'm trying to think of a book with many quotations and footnotes, and I'm stuck—too little imagination.

This tome is called Patterns of Global Terrorism 1985–2004, and the article was a Congressional report called "Proposals for Intelligence Reorganization, 1949–2004." Lots of footnoted quotes from various commissions.

Brad

[Michael Rowley]

Brad:

Lots of footnoted quotes from various commissions

I can imagine that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was a great deal more interesting, though perhaps more stressful.

[marlene]

Perhaps you could find someone to modify your macro for InDesign.

I could probably modify the macros myself, if I could find a list of ID tags that were comparable to Quark's Xpress tags. But so far the only list I've found did not include a tag that would simply call for the italic of whatever font was currently used in the paragraph style; the ID tag I found would require specifying the exact italic font, including the font name (and then to return to the regular font, I'd also have to specify the exact font). This might work, although it could require more effort, but I haven't tried it yet.

It is easy to 'Select all' in Word, then convert all paragraph styles to one simple style

That was really the key to the puzzle. I did that (IIRC, I created a Word style using the font I was going to use in ID) and it worked really well. Even when I applied a new paragraph style in ID, it kept the italic and bold formatting, etc.

I still need to do some experimenting -- not sure if Word bullets and auto-numbering will carry over into ID -- but at least now I feel like I'm on the right track.

mxh

[marlene]

I keep meaning to try the qXport demo, but other crises keep cropping up (software, hardware, pesky clients, life in general). If it does what I need, it will be well worth the cost.

I'm just so spoiled by having my finely-honed Xpress tags macros that work so well, and so quickly. I can run a dozen Word files through my macros and resave as .xtg files in just a few minutes.

I will try to get to the qXport demo this weekend. Sooner or later I'll be getting another bunch of Word files for ID projects (those projects arrive in gaggles), and I'd like to have my ducks in a row.

mxh

[Michael Rowley]

Marlene:

I could probably modify the macros myself

If you can do it, the advantage is that you can modify the macro whenever it occurs to you that you want to add something: buying a program is fine, but the program often turns out to be based on VBA itself, but can't be modified (except by its author).

If ID requires a complete specification before it'll do anything, the font name can be found in VBA (at least it could in Word Basic).

Word bullets are OK, but I don't remember if they convert (ID Help has the list of things that do and don't convert). Word numbering ditto, with the added remark that I avoid Word's automatic numbering like the plague, although I think it's OK now—old habits die hard!

[BradW]

InDesign CS came with a file called "Tagged Text.pdf" that might be of some help. If it's not on your hard drive (and yours might have an underscore instead of an internal word space, of course), look on your installation disks.

The best way of figuring out the tags you need is to format some text in ID and export it as tags; you'll have the choice between verbose and non-verbose (or some similar name).

I just ran a test with qXport using its InDesign option, specifically telling it to leave out paragraph and font codes (but leaving in the font styles) and got codes like "<cTypeface:Italic>" and "<cTypeface:Regular>" (the simplified versions would be "<ct:italic>" and "<ct:Regular>").

With ID, the above codes would get wonky when dealing with faces that have heavy or oblique styles, but ID's find/change fonts dialogue would allow you to clean up a file rapidly.

Brad

[Stephen Owades]

I keep meaning to try the qXport demo, but other crises keep cropping up (software, hardware, pesky clients, life in general). If it does what I need, it will be well worth the cost.

I'm just so spoiled by having my finely-honed Xpress tags macros that work so well, and so quickly. I can run a dozen Word files through my macros and resave as .xtg files in just a few minutes.

I will try to get to the qXport demo this weekend. Sooner or later I'll be getting another bunch of Word files for ID projects (those projects arrive in gaggles), and I'd like to have my ducks in a row.

mxh
If you really like your Xpress tags exporting process and want to continue using it with InDesign, you can buy Xtags for InDesign from Em Software (http://www.emsoftware.com/). Regular (Quark) Xtags is a sort of Xpress-tags-on-steroids, which exposes more of the capabilities of QuarkXPress than the included Xpress tags language; it will accept standard Xpress tags coding without problems. And Em Software as created an Xtags for InDesign that will allow you to import the same tagged text as the Quark version.

[Michael Rowley]

Brad:

InDesign CS came with a file called "Tagged Text.pdf"

Which version of InDesign is that? I've got InDesign v. 3, which might be 'CS', but I'm not sure.

[BradW]

The only version of InDesign I've had is v.3, which is indeed the same as ID CS1.

I may very well have had to look for the file on one of the disks; I can't remember if it was installed automatically.

Brad

[Michael Rowley]

Brad:

The only version of InDesign I've had is v.3, which is indeed the same as ID CS1

My question was a futile one, as I have now realized: the answer stares me in the face when I open InDesign: Adobe InDesign CS—however, written sideways! Possibly the chief designer for InDesign had a mother that was frightened by a crab while carrying him: text printed sideways seem to be his ideal.