I listen to this podcast today (late, I admit), and i wonder about the “rotating text in frames” topic. I had my one way to do this for years (i think since InDesign 1.5), and it works without the Pathfinder. For me, it is more intuitive, but it is harder to do, if the frame has more anchorpoints. This is the way:

Draw a frame and fill it with text.
Rotate the frame to the angel, the text should have (e.g. 20°).
Select all anchorpoints (!) of the frame with the direct selection tool (holding the shift key down).
Rotate the frame (without the text) back, to its original angel (by rotation e.g. -20°)
That’s it.

Thanks for the brilliant Podcast. I have much fun listen to it, even the older episodes.

Great to see there are so many other comparable examples out there… plus lots of wine guides.

I’m with Anne-Marie in waiting on the US (California?) WineGuide story Had the pleasure of visiting Napa Valley at some years ago and it has similarities with Western Australia (the other WA, that David confuses with the OTHER WA…)

Yep, my tools were Mac based, mainly because the legacy of the work was done on Mac. However the project could have been done on PC.
Formdesk is platform independent. FileMaker Pro will run on Mac and PC. Apparently an equivalent for TextWrangler on PC would be the “HTML Kit -929″ — according to reviews I found on http://www.versiontracker.com. Others might have found a more similar PC based text editing tool?

One of my main projects is laying out two or three convention programs a year for a nonprofit corporation. The bulk of the convention program book consists of listings for on-site events. The listings are small but numerous, each with a description paragraph that can vary in size from a few words to a several sentences. All listings share a common set of elements. The number of event listings typically hovers around 300.

For years, the event listing file, a lengthy Word file, was placed, set and formatted by hand, page after page, entry by entry. This was the situation when I took over layout duties, and how I did it at first. I found the process tedious and error-prone, so I came up with a workaround using Excel, Word and InDesign in concert.

I now get the event data in the form of an Excel spreadsheet, rather than a Word file. Each data element of a listing has its own column, and each row is a complete listing record. Word has a fairly powerful data merge function hidden in the Mail Merge menu. Using the so-called Mail Merge function in a “directory” mode you can import the Excel data into a specially created data merge template.

In Word, I create a template placing each data element where I wanted. I applied paragraph formatting styles to the template. Excel does the sorting; putting the event records into the order they need to appear in the book. Word to merges the listings into a single text file with all formatting and styles applied. I do not need to create delimited data files; Word’s merge function deals directly with the native Excel file.

When I place the Word file into the InDesign document, the paragraph styles import with the text. If I need to make formatting changes, I make the changes on the InDesign styles palette and they are applied throughout the document. In fact, as long as the Word style names and the InDesign style names are the same, it doesn’t matter what formatting I originally use in Word.

The merge saves a significant amount of time and effort by automatically formatting over half the book upon import into InDesign. It offers flexibility because all elements of an event listing can be re-formatted through the InDesign styles palette.

…but the bonding box text frame is still rotated.

If I want the bonding box text frame not rotated, I make a copy of the box, merge (Add) the rotated text to it ( as Tim said), cut the result and Paste Into the original box (you will need to adjust the inside with the outside). Useful if you have Type on a Path around the shape or for positionning.

I love you all for the greatest informations about InDesign in the world.
I will master the beast.

Full le Fun.