By: Michael Murphy
September 3 2006 • 7:40 PM
Episode 28: An InDesign Inventory, Part 2 (VIDEO)
Picking up right where Part 1 left off, this episode concludes my InDesign Inventory of features put to work in the design of a 256-page magazine. In two more examples, I cover working with Master Pages and Document Pages simultaneously, and deconstruct how a timeline was created using hidden Tables, master Object Styles, and Anchored Objects.
This episode is available in both the standard 672 x 450 format, as well as in an iPod compatible version.
Dave Saunders asked (in a comment on my Glad to Be Aboard post):
“…the anchored object as callout point trick: how did you keep the other end still? Or did you gloss over the need to move the pointer back where it belongs?”
Yes, I did gloss over that…not seeing the forest for the trees, I suppose. In any instance that I re-positioned or re-sized any of those tables, I did have to re-position the point where it touches the timeline.
The trade-off of having to move those endpoints is a small price to pay compared to consistency and effiency afforded by the overall approach.
I’ll have to remember that — just because I knew that the whole time — a video podcast can’t connect me telepathically to people so that they know it, too.
Thanks for catching that, Dave!
I was so impressed that the other end didn’t move! For me, one of InDesign’s annoying weaknesses is that it won’t let you treat a point on a path as an object. Oh, to be able to do that! Imagine aligning points with each other or with other objects.
Anyway, thanks for explaining. I adopted your process this very morning on a diagram I was working on.
And, I ran into a second gotcha. If you anchor an object in a text frame that has a drop shadow, the drop shadow also applies to the anchored object, and, as far as I can see, you can’t turn it off — you can even have a second shadow on the same object, but I couldn’t find a way to get one to cancel out the other.
Oh wow! If you anchor an object in a text frame that is itself anchored in a text frame with each of the three having a different object style, each of which has a shadow, the third item has all three shadows, as long as it is positioned outside of the containing objects.
I’m sure you could take this as far as you wanted, but it could make for some really weird effects!
Thinks: wasn’t I supposed to be working this morning?
i guess this options are available for CS2 not for InDesign CS…
Great job!
Yes, Emir, the Anchored Object options and Object Styles are CS2-only. Reason enough to upgrade, I’d say.
Hi Michael, great stuff you got here. I just went crazy when I found your videocasts. Just one thing in the anchored objects; when I fit the Frame to Content, it doesn’t adjust to the Frame with the brackets, it leaves a white space around it, and it only adjust in the vertical. This only happens when the frame has an achored objects. Can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong. Keep up the good work!
João –
Sorry to take so long to reply. There could be several causes for this, depending on how your frames are set up. It probably has something to do with where and how your anchored objects are placed.
First…they should be set to be “Custom” objects in the Anchored Object Options dialog box, not Inline or Above Line. That gives you the most flexibility. Second…it depends on where in the frame they are placed.
In my example, all of the items above the timeline had the anchored object inserted immediately after the last character of the text in the top cell of the table (not in the bottom cell that has the strokes to create the bracket look).
In the items that fell below the timeline, the anchored objects were inserted just before the very first character of the text in the bottom cell (not the top cell with the strokes to create the bracket look).
If you check this and it still doesn’t work, send me a copy of your file (or a snippet) to info@theindesigner.com, and I’ll take a look at what’s going on.
Michael, thanks a lot! I was positioning the object in the text frame, but outside the table. Now it works perfectly. Thanks for the explanation and for your time.