InDesignSecrets Podcast 049
Listen in your browser:
InDesignSecrets-049.mp3 (13.1 MB, 27:53 minutes)
or read the transcript
- News: Upcoming InDesign Conference in NY, David’s ID CS3 Essentials videos
- Threading and unthreading text frames — tips and scripts
- Hot Button Post of the Week: Spot Colors and Flattening in CS3 (and, related, PDF/X-4)
- The Return of the Quizzler!
- Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Use Inline Input for Non-Latin Text
Links mentioned in the podcast:
The InDesign Conference, New York City, NY, June 4–8, 2007. Enter coupon code ISDISBC07 for $100 off the registration fee.
David’s ID CS3 Essentials on lynda.com (link leads to free 7-day trial)
InDesign CS2 Keyboard Shortcuts poster
SplitStory.jsx script: Post with download info, Post about installing
Aextra Software’s CleverTextLink plug-in for CS/CS2, $39
Quizzler instructions: If you have an answer to this episode’s Quizzler, don’t post it here! E-mail it to info@indesignsecrets.com with “Quizzler” in the Subject. One winner will be chosen randomly from all the correct answers received by midnight, May 15, 2007. The winner will be mailed our beautiful InDesign CS2 Keyboard Shortcuts poster. Remember, don’t post your answer here! You’ll ruin it for everyone!
Listener Comment Line: +1-206-888-INDY (-4639)
Talk to us, baby: Leave a message!
Do I sound like I’m a robot sitting inside a box in this episode? I apologize for the terrible sound quality. It’s a long story, but the short version is “Oops. My fault.”
No worries. I ran the PC output through my home theater system, cranked the volume to maximum, and could hear everything quite well…
Sounds like David is in his bathroom, in the bath (with a big cigar ?)…
I agree the sound was strange, but at least it gives the program a different taste, Hyaa.
But I want to bring something out, that is you cant write arabic fonts inside indesign only if you have ME Version (as far as I know), so I wont be using the non-latin inline feature on my side. (believe me you don’t want to work with Arabic fonts they drive me crazy)
Thank you both David and Anne for your wonderful episodes.
Mamoon, I am able to type all kinds of languages, including Arabic, into my English version of InDesign. For example, here’s one text frame:
As we said in the podcast episode, you can only type left-to-right, but as long as you have the proper Input Method and font selected, it works okay (if you don’t mind typing backward).
However, I understand that Arabic (and Hebrew and some other languages) have contextual characters. That is, the character should appear different depending on where it is in a word. That also is not handled automatically in most cases (except in the ME version, which is available from WinSoft).
(By the way, please tell me if the ABC text in Arabic is actually a word! I obviously don’t speak Arabic, and I wouldn’t want to type a “bad” word accidentally.)
Strang!!!! itried to type some Arabic in my English version but I think I should choose the right font as you said, thank you for orrecting my mistake, but as you said even if I write backwords it wont look right because our letters mix with others depending on their place in the word and the arabic first 2 letters you wrote should mix together in the real world.
And dont worry because the 3 arabic letters dont have a meaning I know in Arabic and they look safe especially with the two first letters being seperate
and these are not ABC in Arabic but they are only place their with ABC on the keyboard but dont represent the 3 first letters in the Arabic Alphbet, and to give you more info the word alphabet came from the three first letters in Arabic Alphabet (Alif, Baa, Taa), 
Iknow I worte to much but I just liked to bring on some of our culture on this amazing blog.
thanks for the info and I will try typing Arabic on my EN version first thing morning
The coupon code (ISDISBC07) for the NYC InDesign conference didn’t work for me
Sorry about that, Carlos! The conference company says they have fixed the problem now. Please try again. I hope to see you in NY!
Well, I registered already. You think they can refund me the $ now? And yes, you will se me in NYC… can’t wiat!!!
Running cider? Running cider?
So I’m listening to the podcast and trying to figure out why Anne-Marie is talking about running headers, running footers, and running ciders?
Cider? Why are we drinking cider on the layouts.
Finally I got it. Running sidebars, or thumb tabs!
Yeah, Sandee, that caught me off guard, too! “Running siders!” It’s funny that there’s all kinds of terminology in this biz that’s not really figured out; that is, many people use the same word for different things, or people use different words for the same thing.
Oh man, you guys are reading too much into it! I was just making up a word.
I’ll think twice before I do that again! … lol. (”running ciders” … heh)
I said “running siders,” as I think about it, in reaction to the somewhat misleading “Running Headers” name of that kind of variable. As I mentioned in the podcast, it’s not just for headers, it’s for footers, siders … and for that matter diagonalers (but I couldn’t pronounce this so I didn’t try … heh) … IOW, any location on the page. As you know.
For those who don’t — essentially, this variable picks up (duplicates) either the first or last instance of text formatted with a specified Character or Paragraph style on a page. Where you insert that variable is up to you. It could be at the top (a Running Header), at the bottom, even inside the text flow. Or on the cide.
I guess “Running Header” is a great shorthand term — I think most people looking for this function are looking for a command with “Running” in its title — but it’s inaccurate, no?
How about just “Running…” I kind of like that.
btw, shouldn’t these comments about variables go into the podcast where we talked about them? Podcast 51, not 49.
Not sure how to move them, though. I’ll add a reference in podcast 51 to this discussion, maybe it’ll help out others who are wondering what the heck running ciders are and how can I get me one…