June 25 2010 • 7:50 AM
InDesignSecrets Podcast 128
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- InDesign to ePub
- What is it, why should you care?
- Essentials of getting your InDesign file ePub-ready
- Common glitches and tweaks
- Quizzler Results! Two winners and many honorable mentions for their creative triangle-creation methods (full list after Links, below)
- Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Single Word Justification
- InDesignSecretsLive Seminars: San Francisco & Chicago in June; LA, DC, Santa Fe, Denver, and more in the fall!
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News and special offers from our sponsors:
>> UK-based Certitec, an Adobe Authorized Training Center, is giving away one free 2-day InDesign class to a lucky InDesignSecrets.com listener. Classes will be held in Cardiff or London, U.K. To enter the drawing for the free class, go to http://www.certitec.com/indesignsecrets.html and fill out the form. Quick! You only have 14 days from the date of this podcast to enter the drawing. If you don’t win, you can always register for any 2010 class at Certitec for 10% off if you mention “InDesignSecrets” when registering.
>> Rorohiko’s StoryTweaker ($99) plug-in lets editors and writers access your InDesign file’s text without needing to own InDesign or InCopy. The plug-in is associated with one InDesign seat, but allows that user to create an unlimited number of AssignmentTweaker sets, which is what the editors open and work on. The workflow is spelled out on the StoryTweaker site, and there’s a 20-day free trial available. Special for InDesignSecrets listeners: Use the coupon code INDESIGNSECRETS128 in the Rorohiko.com store to get 25% off the StoryTweaker plug-in.
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Links mentioned in this podcast:
> All posts tagged with “epub” in InDesignSecrets.com
> Liz Castro’s Pigs, Gourds, and Wikis blog
> The #ePrdctn Twitter hashtag is all about ePub production
> Great eReader matrix (what device reads what format)
> Adobe Digital Editions ePub reader utility
> All InDesignSecrets recorded webinars
> James Michener’s Alaska
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How to create a triangle in InDesign
1. Pen Tool: Click four times
2. Pencil Tool: Draw carefully!
3. Line Tool: Draw three lines, then select the endpoints with Direct Selection tool and choose Object > Paths > Join
4. Draw a one-cell table. Put stroke on two sides and leave two sides set to None stroke. Then add diagonal line in Cell Options dialog box.
5. Click once with the Polygon tool and set it to three sides and zero inset
6. Convert any frame to triangle (Object > Convert Shape > Triangle)
7. Use a photo of a triangle, make clipping path with detect edges then convert path to frame
8. Use a triangle character from a font, such as “p” in Wingdings 3 (then use Type > Create Outlines)
9. Draw a rectangle, then use Direct Selection tool to drag a corner point to the frame’s middle point
10. Draw a rectangle, then use Direct Selection tool to delete one of the corner points or scale it to 0%
11. Add an angled gradient fill that ends abruptly
12. Draw two rectangles. Rotate one so that it overlaps the first, select both then use Object > Pathfinder > Intersect
13. Paste one rectangle into another and rotate the first one inside the other
14. Arrange three rectangles so negative space creates a triangle shape
15. Draw a very short line, but make it very thick in Strokes panel. Give it an endpoint of a triangle (so that the triangular endpoint covers up the whole of the line)
16. Type capital “A” in a frame and convert the frame to outlines. Select and choose Object > Path > Release Compound Path. Delete the “outside” path and use the triangular counter.
17. Draw an ellipse. Choose the Pen tool and click on one point of the ellipse to delete it. Now hold down the Option/Alt key (to get temporary Convert Point tool) and click the 3 remaining points.
2. Pencil Tool: Draw carefully!
3. Line Tool: Draw three lines, then select the endpoints with Direct Selection tool and choose Object > Paths > Join
4. Draw a one-cell table. Put stroke on two sides and leave two sides set to None stroke. Then add diagonal line in Cell Options dialog box.
5. Click once with the Polygon tool and set it to three sides and zero inset
6. Convert any frame to triangle (Object > Convert Shape > Triangle)
7. Use a photo of a triangle, make clipping path with detect edges then convert path to frame
8. Use a triangle character from a font, such as “p” in Wingdings 3 (then use Type > Create Outlines)
9. Draw a rectangle, then use Direct Selection tool to drag a corner point to the frame’s middle point
10. Draw a rectangle, then use Direct Selection tool to delete one of the corner points or scale it to 0%
11. Add an angled gradient fill that ends abruptly
12. Draw two rectangles. Rotate one so that it overlaps the first, select both then use Object > Pathfinder > Intersect
13. Paste one rectangle into another and rotate the first one inside the other
14. Arrange three rectangles so negative space creates a triangle shape
15. Draw a very short line, but make it very thick in Strokes panel. Give it an endpoint of a triangle (so that the triangular endpoint covers up the whole of the line)
16. Type capital “A” in a frame and convert the frame to outlines. Select and choose Object > Path > Release Compound Path. Delete the “outside” path and use the triangular counter.
17. Draw an ellipse. Choose the Pen tool and click on one point of the ellipse to delete it. Now hold down the Option/Alt key (to get temporary Convert Point tool) and click the 3 remaining points.
18. View a screen shot of a triangle created by rotating three pages using Mike Rankin’s Transform Pages trick
Have more? Add them to the comments below!
Heh heh – what a fun quizzler that was! I cannot wait for the next one. I had never really thought about triangles in InDesign, I don’t think I’ve ever used one lol – but to explore and think outside the “triangle” in creating this paradigm was actually a lot of fun. I would never have thought of using a table cell to create a triangle lol. But now I know I can if I ever need it?
I admit I skipped straight to the quizzler portion of the podcast – but I’ll go back over it again in the coming days.
David’s email telling me I won was filtered into my gmail spam folder. I found out riding my motorcycle home from a seminar.
I hope we get more quizzlers like this. it’s fun exploring the options and finding new ways, or multiple ways, to do old things.
Interesting show. You mention tweaking the ePub file after it has been exported from ID. What utilities are out there for editing the ePub file and then re-compressing it in the proper format? Thanks.
@Mark: On the Mac, I like opening the ePub file using Springy. I set up Springy so that I can edit the files without ever decompressing the epub. Other folks like using Oxygen editor; that’s cool, too, but it’s a bit more intense and less intuitive for me.
Thank you for the inside info on epub publishing – we are on a new frontier here with these new devices. I’m interested in hearing about how photobook will make this transition to these various formats. PDF seems to make the most sense for now, but I’m interested in hearing about techniques for anchoring images for proper display in an epub document – where there is no text to anchor to – just images – in the book. Any thoughts?
@Shaun: epub is a terrible, terrible format for photo books. It can be done, but epub is really not designed for that. PDF is the way to go.
I remember there being an article or video on IDS showing the use of Springy on an ePub and how to edit the CSS. Does anyone remember where this is found? I have tried trawling the “ePub” tag but to no avail.
Thanks