Tagged text

[Norman Hathaway]

I need to setup some workflow guidelines for some writers here, and perhaps provide them with some Word templates with established tagged text styles.

No experience doing his, but familiar with it generally...

Any good docs out there that may help me? Tips? Derogatory remarks?

[Michael Rowley]

Norman:

'Word templates with established tagged text styles'

Word doesn't use 'tagging', but you can write a template with given paragraph and text characteristics, so that if writers choose 'Body text' everthing in a 'body text' paragraph is (say) 11/13.5 pt Georgia. Is that what you aim to do? If so, the many templates supplied with Word will give you an idea of what can be specified.

[Norman Hathaway]

I want it so when a writer creates a subhead or caption, when i import his doc into InDesign, her styles map to mine - and I can go home early.

[Shane Stanley]

I want it so when a writer creates a subhead or caption, when i import his doc into InDesign, her styles map to mine - and I can go home early.

Assuming you're using CS2, the import options allow you to map Word styles to your ID styles, and save the mapping for re-use. It's really just a matter of having her use styles consistently.

Shane

[Michael Rowley]

Norman:

'I want it so when a writer creates a subhead or caption'

That is one of the (few) instances where writers often use 'Heading 1', 'Heading 2', and so on. If InDesign (or any other layout program, as far as I know) has a styles labelled the same, then the imported text conforms to the InDesign style. Consequently, in that case, the Word style doesn't matter: the ID style overrides it. On the other hand, if the style has a label that is unique to Word, InDesign will honour it as far as it can (which should be in all respects).

[Steve Rindsberg]

re Word --> ID styles

That's quite convenient.

How well does ID handle Word files with graphics embedded?

I recently had to help a non-profit group create a directory that had begun life as a Word document years ago and been massaged, manipulated and mauled by far too many hands since.

The new director is agitating for a copy of ID. I'm in favor of anything that even vaguely resembles a DTP app if it means I never have to touch this thing in Word again. If it seems likely that we could import the existing doc into ID, it'd be that much easier to sell the board on paying for it.

[Michael Rowley]

Steve:

'How well does ID handle Word files with graphics embedded?'

I think it copes quite well: Word has a limited range of graphics types.

If you dig down in InDesigns Help (or was it the Tutorials?) there's a guide to the things that can and can't be imported from Word documents into InDesign. Chief are sections, running heads, page numbers, frames, and TOCs; and I think, maybe footnotes.

One snag about Word styles is that there are more than a hundred built-in styles; I don't know how many have the same name as ID styles. The other snag is that people make astonishingly complex Word documents without consciously using styles at all (except 'Normal'); all the paragraphs and text are cofigured by overrides. This of course has its advantages too: with a few keystrokes the whole Word document can be restored to the Normal style.

Most DTP programs, including InDesign, cope pretty well with Word files, though they may lose some of Word's best points (there are some).

[Norman Hathaway]

Helpful to establish styles in InDesign, prior to importing from Word, as you can map the Word styles to InDesign's

[Shane Stanley]

If you dig down in InDesigns Help (or was it the Tutorials?) there's a guide to the things that can and can't be imported from Word documents into InDesign. Chief are sections, running heads, page numbers, frames, and TOCs; and I think, maybe footnotes.

Footnotes are OK, as is the text of TOCs.

One snag about Word styles is that there are more than a hundred built-in styles

But you can tell ID to ignore unused styles.

Shane

[Michael Rowley]

Shane:

'as is the text of TOCs'

Oh; I thought the InDesign wouldn't recognize Word's fields.

[Steve Rindsberg]

>>One snag about Word styles is that there are more than a hundred built-in styles;

Which I told them not to use. All of the styles I created for them had a unique prefix so there'd be no doubt in anyone's mind. If the built in styles went away during translation, that'd be no loss in this case.

> The other snag is that people make astonishingly complex Word documents without consciously using styles at all

Yes, they did. And I undid it all. And told them that if they re-did it, any further help would come from some other source. I'm a grouch when I'm working for free and they don't pay attention to me.

That's good news on the whole, then.

[Norman Hathaway]

Steve

If I PayPal'd you a dollar, would you send me one of your styled docs? I'd love to have a look at to see the proper way to prepare one.

-N

[Steve Rindsberg]

If I can scare up a copy, maybe I can just remove the bulk of the content and replace it with innocuous stuff.

OTOH, I don't pretend to be an expert at this, just a firm believer in defining a style once instead of manually applying the style's attributes over and over again. Which is the long way of saying that what I've done may not be "best practice" ... just better than what my "client" was doing.

[Norman Hathaway]

I'm not picky Steve.

Really.

[Michael Rowley]

Steve:

'just a firm believer in defining a style once instead of manually applying the style's attributes over and over again'

Is there any other way? Mind you, you can redefine Word styles just for the document you're working on, which is probably the best way if you're not sure that you'll ever be writing a document of that kind again.

[Steve Rindsberg]

Steve:

'just a firm believer in defining a style once instead of manually applying the style's attributes over and over again'

Is there any other way? Mind you, you can redefine Word styles just for the document you're working on, which is probably the best way if you're not sure that you'll ever be writing a document of that kind again.
Any other way? Why yes! The way most innocent users do everything.

Select the text. Apply the font they want. Apply the size. Apply the .... well, all of it. A click at a time. Then do it all over for the next batch of text. Then do it all over when the formatting needs to change.

I get nasty when I'm trying to explain style and the beneficiary of this about-to-be-imparted life-changing wisdom tells me they haven't the *time* to learn this.

Ah. Well. I've only the time to fix this mess once. I can teach you how not to make further messes or I can leave you to wallow in this one.

Tsk. No patience whatsoever.

[Michael Rowley]

Steve:

'Any other way?'

I meant the question ironically. I see quite a lot of Word documents, and not many use styles as you have described. I do, but then I started doing it in the DOS days, when there was a very good handbook for Word; then, you couldn't sell a WP program that hadn't got a good handbook (as WordPerfect found: it had a handbook, but almost anything you read referred you to some other page).

[Steve Rindsberg]

Ah. Irony. And without smilies. I remember that from when I was younger. Haven't they banned that or something?