Infinity in InDesign
Occasionally I run across an error when I am using InDesign informing me that I have input a number outside the range of a given dialog box. Normally, this happens because I typed in the wrong number by accident, but today I thought that it would be an interesting experiment to find out the limits of all the dialog boxes inside InDesign. Here are my findings:
- Columns in a text frame : 40
- Columns in a page margin: 216
- Text frame gutter: 120″
- Size of a document: 216″x216″
- Number of pages in a document: 9,999
- Number of pages created with a section start (book): 999,999 (BDWGM if you choose Letters; CMXCIXMCMXCIX for Roman numerals)
Although after creating a section start, you can continue to add pages, pushing the count over 1 million. (which is MM for the Roman’s out there) - Bleed/slug: 6″
- Nested styles: 100
- Line styles: 100
- Grep styles: 100
- Stroke: 800pt
- Shear: 89.0
- Type size: 1296pt
- Leading: 5000pt
- Space before/after: 120″
- Frame size when clicking on a page to create a frame: 225.5556″
- Frame size in control panel: Infinity…
Yes infinity. I thought that a small black hole was going to form in my office and suck my laptop into oblivion when this occurred on screen.
There are two different ways to get to infinity. I first achieved infinity by selecting a frame and typing a large number into the width field. I started by doubling the size of the frame, but it was too slow. I started to add a bunch of 9999’s at the end the the number, and it kept growing. Eventually it starts to top out and displays 9e+41 in. I kept on adding 9’s to the +41 number and eventually I hit the mother-load. Infinity.
You can also reach infinity by just typing “Infinity in” into the width field of a frame.
Bonus tip: to type the infinity character the keyboard shortcut is opt+5 (alt+5 on pc)
Infinity … excellent. heh.
A few more to add to the list:
- Number of columns in a table: 200
- Number of body rows in a table: 10,000
- Number of header rows: 25 (ditto for footer rows)
- Paragraph spacing limit (for vertically justified text): 720 points, aka 10 inches
I also like the *minimum* size for new documents: 1 point (0p1). Seriously, one point square. For when you’re publishing to grains of rice, heads of pins, and so on. Sneeze and the document flies off the screen.
Don’t forget that you have thousands of readers outside the US/UK measurement system !
I always though MM was 2,000. 1,000 + 1,000 not 1,000 x 1,000. Not that I ever use Roman numerals in anything except front matter for books.
Back in the day a line was inscribed on top of a roman numeral to denote a thousand.
I (with a horizontal line above) would mean 1,000 as, I is 1
For 100’s of thousands there were two lines inscribed on both sides along with the horizontal line on top, so:
You would use |V| (with a line on top) to denote 500,000
|X| (with a line over the top of it) was used to denote a million
It wasn’t until the second century the M was used to denote 1,000, so the I with a horizontal bar was not used from this point on.
M is 1,000 but when you put the horizontal bar on top of it is 1,000,000, so basically the horizontal bar means multiply by 1,000.
So if you wanted to write 4,000 in roman numerals, you would write MV (the V would only have the horizontal bar above it) this is because M=1000 and the V (with a bar above) would be 5,000, much like you put IV = 4, as in 5 - 1, MV (with a bar above the V, would be 5000 - 1000 = 4000).
They had no number for zero though, or negative numbers, I guess they didn’t believe in them. But I don’t believe in any number that is 1 or higher, they don’t exist.
a couple more bits of the infinite:
recent items - 30
pasteboard vert. offset - 10 feet (720p)
I think there’s also a limit of 2oo inches for the max size PDF you can output. Bob Levine would know more.
Wow, what cool bigtime stuff! And while Eugene doesn’t believe in numbers larger than 1, I don’t believe in “infinity”. For whatever exists is finite, and hence limited — also in quantity. “Infinity” is just a way of stating the *potential* of a number series: however large a number you write, you can always add 1 and make it even larger.
@ Klaus: That’s why the vedic literature defines infinity not as the biggest quantity but as that which is bigger than the biggest
From this point of view infinity is NOT the result of endless counting but the foundation of all which is finite. First there was infinity (the ONE), later came diversity (the TWO and the MANY) 
Yup…more here on PDF export limit:
http://indesignsecrets.com/beware-200-limit-for-pdfs.php
How fascinating. The most limiting of these limits is the text size limit. However there are (at least) two ways to work around this. One is of course to vectorize the text. The other is to switch to adjust scaling percentage in Preferences->General. Then you may scale your text to (even more) ridiculous sizes. Any more ways?
It’s damn sad that actually half of everything you wrote doesn’t make any sense to me just because I’m European and use metrics. Infinity feature is the only one got my interest. But don’t see actual need in these experiments. I can’t imagine anyone able to be comfortable in even 50 styles. Except for GREP, but I think Adobe will expand it as soon as people will start to use this feature more.
I did think twice and realize — are we talking about max settings per document of per program? There should/could be differences.
I’m European too, but I don’t use metrics. I drink pints and drive at miles per hour (but not immediately afterwards).
When I use InDesign, I use points/picas for everything. For a start, it makes macroscopic measurements mesh with type sizes in an intuitive way. And the number ten has just two prime factors, but the number twelve is divisible by 6, 4, 3, and 2. That can be really helpful for neat layout.
As well as that, points are surely the easiest units for scripting, and I’ll bet most scripters “think” in terms of points.
Returning to the subject of “taking things to the limit”, a while ago David (Blatner) showed us that you can move text right “out of the box” (i.e. text frame or table cell) by putting something small/irrelevant in front of it and cranking up the kerning to ridiculous negative levels. I’ve found this can be very useful — thanks, David!
My challenge: How far can you “kern” text out of a box?
Playing around with it today (in between periods of finding it useful) I found I was able to “kern” text all the way from the right-hand-side of an A4 to the left-hand-side of an opposite page, and further, although things began to get a bit weird once I’d reached the pasteboard…
Jeremy