InDesignSecrets Videocast #1: Line Styles and GREP Styles
Welcome to our brand new InDesignSecrets Videocast (or video podcast, or whatever you want to call it). After three years of people asking us to create a videocast, we have finally relented. (Actually, more accurately, it took us that long to figure out how to do a video together, even though our offices are 1000 miles or 1600 km apart.)
This is the first of six videocasts in which we’re going to talk about some of our favorite features in InDesign CS4, and right at the top of our list is GREP Styles and Line Styles.
You can watch the videocast by clicking on the video below, or — if you want a larger version of it — go directly to our channel at indesignsecrets.blip.tv. We’re told that these videos are now will also soon be available on Adobe.tv (we’ll update this or post a comment below when that happens). Alternatively, you can watch (or even subscribe) to the video podcast on iTunes with this link.
Links:
- Adobe: InDesign CS2 and CS3 users can get $200 off when upgrading to CS4 at adobe.com/special/up2suite
- More Information about GREP at indesignsecrets.com/grep
We hope you enjoy our new videocast!
(By the way, we’re learning a lot about video editing as we go. It’s, a-hem, harder than audio! So please forgive us our less-than-perfect quality yet.)
great… at this moment I’m watching your video podcast!
Just finished the video podcast and I have to congratulate you. Really nice produced and great tricks shown.
Thanks a lot for sharing!
Yay. I can’t wait to watch these vidcasts. This adds another dimension to InDesignSecrets! Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better.
Thanks guys! You’s awesome.
WOW! Congratulations! I’ve just watched the first minute so far, but this is going to be great — 100,000,000% more visual than your audio podcasts. Finally I can understand what you guys are talking about! So drop the podcasts, this is the only way forward.
FLASH: I saw all of it now, and it’s splendid — GREP styles rule!
Well done! I’ve been experimenting with both these lately and it’s great to have a succinct, visual way of understanding how they work. You guys do wonderful podcasts…and I’m happy to hear the audio version will still be happening. Keep it up!
Thanks y’all! I’m glad you’re enjoying them. But no, Klaus, we’re not going to drop the audio ones. There’s enough room for both in this town. I do agree that many subjects are better shown than seen, though. So it’s nice to finally have that option open to us.
Great first episode guys, but what I really want is the blintz recipe!
Great episode! Now I really want to upgrade. But here’s a question, since I’m in the middle of laying out two cookbooks. With regard to using GREP style for fractions, how would you deal with a mixed number—part whole number and part fraction, like 1-1/2 cups flour. (Needless to say, I want neither a hyphen nor a space between the whole number part and the fraction part.) It looks like using GREP style the way you’ve described it you’d get eleven halves.
Good question Sue! Assuming you don’t want to use “3/2 cups flour” throughout … heh … I think the easiest way would be to separate the whole number from the fraction with a hairspace instead of a full space or hyphen. The hairspace will prevent the whole number from being sucked into the fraction formatting; and it’s so thin it looks like there’s no space at all between the number and its fraction.
Using Firefox 3 I can’t get the Full Screen mode/button to make the video full screen.
Are you going to introduce HD versions too?
For GREP style on the word «blintz» should put the code “*”blintz(s)?”**” (with “*” code for begininig of word and “**” code for end of word) to avoid change the word «reblintz» or «deblintz».
(*, ** I can’t wrote this code in this comment).
@Tim: The blintz recipe was taken (with permission of at least one of the authors) from “Judaism for Dummies”. If you can ignore the “for dummies” part of the book title, the reading is tasty!
@Eugene: Yes, we noticed that the “full screen” button doesn’t work here on the blog. But you can get full screen by going to indesignsecrets.blip.tv. That said, full screen is going to be pretty grainy at this low resolution! We will look into offering a higher res version.
@Pierre: While I’m not too concerned about “reblintzes”
your point is well taken. To ensure it catches only one word, you could set word boundary codes before and after the text. The word boundary code is backslash-b — which as you discovered, is hard to type in this blog comment (because the html parser strips it out)
The video cast was awesome! I learned some nice new gems that will come in very handy in my projects! Looking forward to seeing future installments!
Thanks so much for new this avenue for learning!
I do have a question for the pros though: I’m diving into automation/increased productivity for my company and I was wondering if you guys can recommend any good books/sites for InDesign automation/productivity?
I’m definitely checking every nook and cranny of InDesignSecrets.com out, but I just wondered if there was anything else out there.
Thanks!
Hey, for folks who really like the videocast, feel free to go to the iTunes page (linked in the post above) and give it a nice review.
@Travis: One of the best resources is the scripting forums at adobe.com. Peter Kahrel has written an ebook on javascripting for O’Reilly. And lots of scripters have their own blogs. But there is no official “indeisgn automation” site. Yet.
Really enjoyed this!! Great productivity tips that not only save time but also would result in less editing and better quality in final product.
I too really enjoyed your first videocast. Now I have no choice and stop using CS2.
I do have a question: what software do you use to share your screen for the purpose of this videocast?
Thanks.
Thanks David. Really good job on the video. I’m really excited by this and best of luck with future casts.
Well done.
Really enjoyed the video. I still find grep a bit intimidating (even after perusing the info on this site). Is there some simple list of the various codes — I mean, how on earth does one learn/remember that backslash-d+ means “one or more digits”? Or maybe I have not read the instructions closely enough?
I am finally making the leap from Quark to Indesign. I produce two 32 page catalogues, (Publishing new releases) I use the same documents from year to year making small modifications to the master pages as I go. The job is long and complex. Each year and the workflow is wonderful in Quark. Now I have to learn everything from scratch. I am used to coding text in MS word and having it flowing into quark reading established styles, flowing in perfectly styled using many different fonts color type etc. Your video is addressing exactly what I have been trying to find in the instructions, some advanced automatic type functions.
Although I am just getting my feet wet, these are the tips that will get me going quicker.
Good Job and I look forward to more
Lucia
You guys are great. Thank you so much!!!
@Travis:
In addition to Peter’s great book, Dave Saunders’s blog is a great resource for scripting InDesign. A lot of great information and examples. He hasn’t added content is quite some time, but the information is (more or less) timeless. Check it out Here: http://jsid.blogspot.com/
Like the ability to SEE what is happening…
I have a GREP question though which I have not been able to fix in the findchange by script
How can I remove all character formatting??
The equivalent of setting character style to “None”??
Answers gratefully received….
Have found my own answer by piecing together some things from a script David wrote and an answer on Adobe forums
grep[TAB]
{findWhat:”.+$”}[TAB]
{appliedCharacterStyle:app.activeDocument.allCharacterStyles[0]}[TAB}
etc etc
Brillliant –but why so complex?? Which graphic designers are REALLY going to get this far into code???
One comment on the content of the videocast:
I would always recommend to include word boundaries when creating greps.
For example instead of blintz(es)? it would be \bblintz(es)?\b
If of course you want blintz with all possible suffixes, you would do: \bblintz(\w)*
Now with the word blintz or blintzes the likely of having a word which contains these letters is pretty unlikely (scrabble anyone?)
, but for many other words it’s very easy to come across conflicts…
Looks like this is now available on Adobe TV. We have our very own channel!
Watching this makes the pain of not being able to upgrade yet to CS4 that much more intense. When I discovered nested styles I was absolutely salivating over the time savings I was going to enjoy. GREP and line styles take that to a whole new level.
This is what the doctor ordered. I think…
I have this darned list of product names, some single word and some multi-word, to be italicized in every instance in every style sheet through the whole publication. So far FindChangeByList works perfectly. It makes each product name the character style I intended. I can then use IndexMatic to find what products were mentioned in the publication and put them in the legal noise at the bottom of the last page.
But you would think…
using GREP styles would do the same, but it doesn’t. After applying the GREP style for the paragraph it does change the product name to the exact formatting I had in the character style. But then, when selected in the character style panel it shows as [None]. Now when I run IndexMatic I get each word of the product name listed, not the whole multi-word name.
I guess you gotta give to get.
There is no video or sound. After a couple of minutes of black screen the last frame of the video appears with the message: “You have just watched Line Styles and GREP Styles”
@Gardenia: We haven’t heard that from other folks. Were you watching here in the blog or at adobe.tv or at blip.tv or…? Perhaps try one of the other options?