How do I do that?
Frequently I get asked a variety of questions. Since my last post was pretty off the wall on the geek factor, I thought it might be a good idea to rear it in a bit with some recent Q & A’s.
Q: How do I line up all of my bullets or numbers?
A: There are two answers to this. The long answer is to use the bullet or numbered list function, but that is for another post. The quick answer is to use the indent to here character.
If you want your text to hang flush, place your cursor where you want everything to hang and type “CMD \” or “CTRL \”. This will type the indent to here character and the rest of your paragraph will indent to the space specified.
Q: My cursor has this strange icon(loaded cursor), and when I click it makes a box. I don’t want it to do that.
A: You may have gotten this by accidently clicking on the outport of a text frame. If you are in CS3 or CS4 you can just hit the ESC key and say goodbye to that cursor.
Q: How do I round just one corner?
A: Go to window > Automation (scary, I know) > scripts. In the scripts panel, follow the trail of folders: Automation > Samples > JavaScript > CornerEffects.jsx. Now select your frame, and then double click on the cornereffcts script and follow the prompts.
Q: How do I change the default font?
A: I am sick of Times New Roman too. Here are the steps.
- Close all documents you have open.
- Click on the type tool.
- Change the font to a new default font. (comic sans anyone?)
For every new text frame you make in new projects, this will be your new default font.
Q: Tracking doesn’t work!
A: That really isn’t a question, but I assume that you are a Quark User.
In QuarkXPress people are used to tightening up the space by changing the amount to -1, -2, or -3 and most people are comfortable with these amounts. If you have been using Quark for awhile and then jump into InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop and try to use tracking, you may run into some issues. Quark and Adobe measure tracking differently.
In QuarkXPress tracking is measured in units 1/200th of an em. In Adobe applications this is measured in units 1/000th of an em. This means that you are using to measuring -1, -2, or -3, you will need to multiply that number by 3 to get the same results in any Adobe application. Therefore you new numbers to type in for tracking are -5, -10, and -15.
In regards to the ONE rounded corner answer. I’m pretty sure there was a post way back regarding someone’s great discovery of a little trick when using Corner Options…
I believe it might have been Sandee that stumbled across the cool technique of adding an extra point along any of the line segments of the shape and then dragging that point directly over top the point that you want to ensure stays a corner point.
I find it helpful to snap temporary vertical and horizontal guides to the target corner to ensure the newly added point ends up directly over top.
Oh wow, I just jumped into CS4, and it looks like they broke this technique! What the heck! I figured I could save myself the hassle of dragging in new guides, by using the Smart Guides…
I turns out that, even though we get the benefit of the Smart Guides to properly line up the extra point over the target point, the adjustment removes the rounded corner from ALL of the corners! Very odd…
Gonna play with it a little bit more…
Hey Fritz, some really good information there, especially with the Quark tracking vs Indesign tracking, very interesting and the illustration is fantastic.
Regarding the “How do I change the default font”, I usually tell people to close all the windows and then make a new paragraph style and put whatever font they want in there. Ensuring that the new paragraph style is highlighted with no documents open, then any new documents use the new paragraph style.
Whereas if you change the default font without making a new paragraph style it adds the [+] symbol to the Basic Paragraph style.
If you were to click the Override style button then it would default back to the original, or if you opened it on another computer and that system didn’t know you changed the Basic Paragraph Style then they could change the Basic Paragraph Style back to the norma by clearing the overrides, or if they had changed the Basic Paragraph Style on their system to a different font then the document would use the font they specified for Basic Paragraph Style.
So, making a new paragraph style without any documents open eliminates those problems. And the paragraph style travel with all the documents you create.
Anyone know how to restore the default set of (stupid) colours in the swatches panel? I somehow deleted all but white, black & registration, but kinda want the default ones back…
Roland,
You can load swatches from a previous file by using the Fly Menu on the Swatches panel and choosing > Load Swatches, find a file that has the default swatches (or more) and then delete the swatches you don’t want.
If you have a document open it will be for that document only. If you have no documents open then it will be for all future documents.
However, I saved out the swatches from a default document.
They can be downloaded here
http://tinyurl.com/5h7h36
Use the Load swatches to load them back in.
Awesome. Thanks Eugene, you tha man, man!
Fritz,
You are right assembling these questions, they are (the) very common topics.
On the last topic re. Tracking the ratio between ID and QXP is 5, as the ratio of 1000 to 200. Thus in ID 5 means or equals 1 in Quark, 10 is 2 and so on. You stated the need to multiply by 3 when moving to Adobe apps., no, it is by 5.
I have been battling hard with Adobe to get Preferences set the tracking/Kerning increment to lower it to 5 instead of the default 20/1000 of m space, as that amount is on the limit or exceeds a value usable or acceptable in many publications as it is clearly visible in most situations.
@Eugene – I agree with your idea to change the default font. That is probably the best practice. The person that asked me that question doesn’t really use styles (gasp! they should get a ticket or something) therefore the simple override might be a quicker and simpler solution for them.
@Roland – I have another solution for the default swatches. I made a custom swatch set on kuler.adobe.com. It contains every default color except the dark blue (since they are limited to the 5 colors). If you search for InDesign default swatches on kuler you will be able to download it and use it. Otherwise, just make your own set of default colors and save it as a file, then you are not limited to the number of colors that you can have.
@federico – I agree, the prefs should be at 5. But if you are truly insane, you should set the prefs to be at 1. That way you have tons of control when you hit opt + left or right. If you hold opt + cmd + left or right you will get 5x which will put it back to the “good” amount. This way you get the best of both worlds: crazy accurate and regular accurate.
I am fairly new to InDesign and using CS3. I am trying to figure out the type on a path but cannot get it. The help shows putting the path in the middle of a text box, but I can only get the points on the box itself. Can someone, please, give me step by step directions? I start off with a text box, don’t I?
I know this is probably old hat to most here, but not to me.
Thanks!
@Becky – You have a bunch of options for type on a path. You may have given me inspiration for my next post. For a quick answer here you go.
If you want it type on a simple square, yes you make a frame and choose the type on a path tool and click to start typing. If you want it just on a line or path you need to draw the line with either the line, pen or pencil too. Next choose the type on a path tool and then start typing.
This is the basics, but it should get you started.
For headlines, how do I set the letters to be flushed left?
For example, Mother
Ives
I’d like for the letters to butt up against the margin and/or guides.
Have tried choosing optical, but no diff.
Thank you,
e~
1/000th (one zerozerozeroth) of an em is 0 em. Or am i mistaken;-)
Thanks for the corner and defaultfont tips
Wow, I never knew about that “indent to here” character. That will save me plenty of time, thanks!
As for the script to create a rounded corner, I much prefer to do it manually, so I can see how big it will look and make adjustments to it.
Probably obvious how you do it manually, but here’s what I do:
1. Duplicate the frame twice
2. Reduce the size of one of the copies horizontally, and reduce the other vertically.
3. Make the original frame rounded (using a keyboard shortcut)
4. Join all 3 together with pathfinder (using a keyboard shortcut).
@Elizabeth
Start with “ignore optical margin”. If that’s not flush enough: add a (hair) space before the first character and apply negative kerning.
I am have a deep dislike for the “dagger” back slash method of creating a hanging indent.
Creating one “properly” is so much better and can be saved as a Paragraph style, thus you can speed your production time up.
The dagger method can also fail when made into a pdf!!! Cause all sorts of problems at the final stage of a big job. Personally I would be happy to see it disabled in ID, it feels like a hangover from Quark.
Yes, I’ve experienced the indent to here character causing problems in pdfs, it happens when you have set an indent here character and your paragraph style/tab panel have an indent and negative first line indent, topped up with a tab character the the the point of the indent.
Trouble is, the PDF technology can’t discern which indent to use; the tab, the indent to here character, or the hanging indent and first line indent.
David helped me with that particular problem a while ago and also agreed that it was peculiar behaviour.
The thing is it didn’t happen in CS2, because I noticed it from a file that I converted over to CS3 and when I saw the weird indenting in the PDF I couldn’t understand it until David figured it out. It definitely doesn’t go weird when making PDFs from CS2. As far as I remember.
@ Eugene
Hi
I have seen it happen in CS2.
Fair enough, I never saw the problem until the CS2 files were converted to CS3, not to say the problem wasn’t in CS2 originally.
!
I am preparing a book that contains a lot of diagrams. Each diagram has a caption is there any way to automatically number diagram captions Eg. Fig 1, so on.
I’ve found an odd behavior that might even be an actual bug. In the Save/SaveAs dialog in ID CS4, clicking or typing in the filebrowser pane causes changes to the filename. In other programs (even other CS4 apps), clicking the filebrowser pane and typing something will cause the “skip to” effect to kick in, which is very handy. But it seems to be broken in ID CS4. Quite a few times, I’ve typed my “save as” filename, then clicked in the filebrowser pane to browse to the proper folder, and when I type the folder’s first few letters, I lose my filename because suddenly I’m typing over it.
What’s up with that? Is it just me?
(Sorry if I posted in the wrong place.)
@töff – I have not had this problem on any of my machines, therefore I think it might be an isolated incident. Be sure that InDesign and your operating system are up to date. There might be a bug that is squashed when you run your updaters.
With ID 6.0.4 …
It’s happening under Vista and Win7.
It’s *not* happening under WinXP.
It’s *not* happening under OS X 10.5.8.
That’s a big clue, I guess …
~ ~ but it’s really makin’ me cRaZy ~ ~
I’ve lost I dunno how many filename keyins because of this stupid bug. I know, it’s not hard to retype a filename, but between the “can’t skip to the proper folder” and the “trying to skip wipes out the filename I just entered,” I’m pulling out my hair.
I notice the bug does NOT occur in the Place dialog, though.
Nobody else has noticed this under Vista or Win7?