July 9 2008 • 2:12 PM
InDesignSecrets Podcast 081
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Read the transcript of this podcast here.
* New design for InDesignSecrets.com blog
* Free script extravaganza: Swatch Switcher, Label Graphics, Swap Object Positions, IndexMatic (beta) to index on character styles, Select Objects from Keyboard, Selection to PDF
* “Smallest File Size” PDF preset caution, and related issues with PDF presets
* Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Orthogonal Line
Links mentioned in the Podcast:
Sweet deal from our sponsor! Recosoft’s PDF2ID plug-in discount, just for InDesignSecrets users (this is the last week for the discount!)
Support your local scripter! Home pages for Dave Saunders, Steve Wareham, Marc Autret, Kris Coppetiers, Martinho da Gloria
Anne-Marie’s post about PDF Presets
Sweet deal from our sponsor! Recosoft’s PDF2ID plug-in discount, just for InDesignSecrets users (this is the last week for the discount!)
Support your local scripter! Home pages for Dave Saunders, Steve Wareham, Marc Autret, Kris Coppetiers, Martinho da Gloria
Anne-Marie’s post about PDF Presets
I found one possible good use of converting to orthogonal line. If you make a rectagle and line your frame edges to two elements of the page and then convert to orthogonal line, you will end up with a line exactly in the center of the two elements. (but there are actually better ways of doing this)
The way that I like to draw lines (besides the handy paragraph rules) and keep them editable and versatile is with the strike through. Pull out a text frame (you could make you a snippet or an object in a library if you make lines often) and insert a right indent tab with a strike through. (underline does not keep it centered for next tip, but can be used for some double line effects) Set your text frame vertical justification to center. To center the line between any two elements just put the frame edges on the elements. To (this is one of the handiest things about doing it as a text frame and right indent tab) lengthen or shorten the line all you have to do is grab the frame edge and pull it in or out. This beats trying to edit a line by far. For those that might not know, you can alt click on the strike through (or underline) button to get all the features that are in the stroke panel.
Hey, pretty neat, Jeremy! Thanks!
Hey it’s podcast 3^4 already!
Great podcast and a good review of what’s being going on lately with InD Secrets.
If Steve is reading this, can he please make a script that removes Hyphens from all Paragraph styles in the panels.
That would be awesome. Because I don’t have a clue how to do it???
I can’t help but wonder where the transcripts are… I looked several podcasts back, and they all said it would be “posted soon”.
I think that they’ve only got up as far as transcripts for 71 podcasts. They’re 10 podcast transcripts behind!!!!
Shame on them
(joking guys)
Sorry, people! We actually do have the transcripts, but with the site redesign, they got pushed back to the “Add later” pile. Also we’re considering adding a section just for transcripts (like the Secrets sections for Color, Text, etc.) but not in Secrets per se … once we figure that out they should be caught up quickly.
Eugene,
Do you mean remove hyphens from the names? If so, just dump them or replace with some other character?
Or do you mean switch off hyphenation in the styles?
Dave
Dave, I mean switch off Hyphen in the styles.
Thanks
I used orthogonal line once in a document from a customer. I had to work with this document, and I recognize, that many horizontal lines were not precise straight. They were rotated slightly (but the rotate-angel in the controlpanel was 0°). For me, a precision fanatic, a big pain. So I select all the freaky linies an chose orthogonal line. The world was again okay.
An other question: I miss podcast #81 in iTunes! Any problems after the redesign?
Martin … Hey, excellent use of the Orthogonal Line command! I’m going to remember that.
iTunes is finding 81 fine, though sometimes it takes a little while for them to update, I’ve learned.
Wasn’t the use of orthogonal lines from Quirky Quarky days when creating tables and you had to precisely draw lines that met up with each other, the ortho tool was great, meant we didn’t have any slanty lines for the table layout.
Thank goodness those days are behind us. Why ortho line is there I have no idea, perhaps just to complete the list of shapes so people don’t go, “I can draw rectangles, but how do I draw a straight line”. Answer is use the pen tool and shift click to draw a line that is fixed to 0, 45, 90 degree angles. Can we change that the way we can in Illy?
My thoughts on Ortho line is because if it wasn’t people would complain. It’s like having an extra toe, it’s weird, nearly useless but people love it when you show it to them.
*I don’t have any extra toes, I have the normal amount of 10.
Eugene,
I know it isn’t a complete solution, but any styles that are based off of other styles can all be changed by changing the “parent” style, excepting any specific changes you’ve made to the “child” styles. So, you can go to the Parent style, turn off the Hyphenation there, and all the Children below it will also turn off their Hyphenation. If you turn it off in the [Basic Paragraph] style that InDesign gives you with each new document without any documents open, it will remember that when you create any new docs. So, any new styles you base off of that style will be created with Hyphenation turned off.
Of course, if you’re wanting to remove the option from files you’re getting from someone else…it’s all manual.
This is really more for creating from scratch.
Thanks Derek. I am aware of how to do it manually and how parent and child styles work.
I would need to remove it from styles received by someone else. I was hoping scripts would be the way to go, if they can do that?
David & Anne-Marie – Thanks for the nice words!
Eugene – I’ll take a look into it, doesn’t seem like it should be too difficult to do with a script.
Thanks Steve, much appreciated.
Eugene, copy the text below into a .jsx file. It will turn off hyphenation on all paragraph styles in a document.
myDocument = app.activeDocument;
myParagraphStyles = myDocument.paragraphStyles;
for (i =0; i < myParagraphStyles.length; i ++)
{
myParagraphStyle = myParagraphStyles[i];
try{
myParagraphStyle.hyphenation = false;
}
catch(e){};
}
Regarding the orthogonal line.
It’s not strictly a tool as it doesn’t create a true orthogonal line. A true orthogonal line would be one that can never become non-orthogonal. I vaguely remember some program from my past (could be Quark, could be FreeHand), that created true orthogonal lines.
These could never get screwed up to non-orthogonal.
The orthogonal line command is also found on the Pathfinder panel.
What’s cool about the orthogonal line command is, as mentioned by a previous post, that it will automatically straighten out slightly crooked lines.
And don’t forget, you can select more than one slightly crooked line and apply the command to straighten them all out. The slightly horizontal ones become perfectly horizontal and the slightly vertical ones become perfectly vertical.
Thanks Steve, I’ll give it a go and let you know.
Worked like a dream. Thank you so much, Steve.
To anyone who can help…my scripts won’t work!!
I am using CS3 and Leopard. Whenever I double click on a script to use it, I get the spinning beach ball for about half a second, then it goes away, and nothing happens. My scripts are sick! Does anyone know what is going on? Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!
Lauren, where are you storing your scripts?
Also have you tried the usual troubleshooting techniques? (Rebuild preferences etc.)
http://indesignsecrets.com/rebuilding-indesign-preferences.php
Try running this one-line JavaScript. It could solve the problem:
app.scriptPreferences.userInteractionLevel = UserInteractionLevels.interactWithAll;
If it does solve it what it means is that somehow on your computer user interaction was switched off — this is often done by scripts or plug-ins, but they usually switch it back on again.
Dave
In response to your issue with Acrobat comments and switching back and forth, well we do this the whole time, but we are set up for it. We each have 4 monitors, 2 for InDesign and 2 for Acrobat (one for the comments list of Acrobat) and it works great!
RE: Orthogonal Lines,
I notice when you convert angled lines using the “line” tool to “orthogonal lines” the rectangular bounding box goes away and a rotational value appears in the info dock. This also happens if you draw a straight “line” and then type a value into the rotation field after you’ve drawn it.
So if you were to draw an angled “line” with the “line” tool you’d never know the exact angle, unless you converted it to “orthogonal” when the angle would be revealed.
Try this: draw a “line” at angle, then select the line and rotate it further, note it’s rotation in the “info” panel, then covert to “orthogonal”. Also try it on a rotated curvy path made with the pen tool.
Still not clear on its purpose though.
I can see using orthogonal lines in form work, where you have the need for a lot of very straight lines. But in any other design, particularly ad work, why not just use the line tool and hold shift to draw a straight line.
Also this is the first time that I have listened to the podcast, and I can see this furthering my InDesign skills. Thanks.
I work for a monthly magazine, when we prep files for the printer we export each page of the section in single page PDFs. Naming them XXX_0001.pdf, XXX_0002.pdf and so on and so forth. XXX represents the publication, 000x represents the given page number. My question is, can a script be written to export single page PDFs of the entire section from the InDesign script palette, with a given naming convention?
Josh, there are several tools out there that should be able to help, including the free PEU script, Zevrix BatchOutput, and Badia ExporTools.