Podcast 062 Transcript

To hear the audio episode from which this transcript was made, or to comment on this episode, go to the InDesignSecrets Podcast 062 page.

Anne-Marie “Her Geekness” Concepción: Today’s show is brought to you by Audible. Please visit Audiblepodcasts.com/InDesign for your free audiobook download.

David “Mr. InDesign” Blatner: Welcome to InDesign Secrets, Episode 62. My name is David Blatner and I’m here along with my very crabby co-host Anne-Marie Concepción.

Anne-Marie: Hello.

David: We were just joking about how crabby Anne-Marie is being today.

Anne-Marie: Yes, I’m in a curmudgeonly mood.

David: Well, our podcast and blog at InDesignSecrets.com is not usually crabby but it is Independent Resource for All things InDesign.

Anne-Marie: [like an echo] Ein ein ein.

David: [like an echo] Ein ein ein.

Anne-Marie: [like an echo] Ein ein ein. Whatever. Ever, ever. OK, here’s what we’re going to cover today. We have some news about a major InDesign update. Also, a bunch of new books are out on InDesign CS3. Where to find cool templates and scripts that you should know about. We have two contenders for the hot button post of the week. That’s our blog post that has gotten the biggest response from people who had comments. One is custom page sizes in new documents and the other one is about transforming objects individually, two topics that only geeks would get excited about.

David: How true.

Anne-Marie: She said crabbily. All right, we’re going to announce the Quizzler winner, if you remember, from the last episode. If you remember that Quizzler, we have a winner. We have a bunch of entrants and that was very exciting.

David: Very exciting.

Anne-Marie: And finally the obscure InDesign feature of the week.

David: Eek eek eek.

Anne-Marie: Is the miter joint.

David: Ah, the miter join.

Anne-Marie: Joint.

David: Oh, no, joint!

Anne-Marie: I can’t read my notes. Maybe I’m looking for a miter joint, I don’t know. [laughter]

Oh, by the way this episode is sponsored by Audible.com. Audible.com offers over 40,000 books that you can download and listen to as MP3s just like you listen to this podcast and if you go to this special URL audiopodcasts.com, you get to download a free book. The one that I recommend is Julia Sweeney’s one woman show. If you’ve ever heard of Julia Sweeney, she used to be Pat on Saturday Night Live. She does a fantastic one woman show and the one that they’re offering now is called “Letting Go of God”. Over two hours–a one woman show that is funny and tragic and everything that is Julia Sweeney. If you’ve ever heard her on NPR, she is great.

David: And the funny and tragic book I’ll recommend–because I have to recommend my own book, “The Joy of Pi.” I wrote a book all about the number Pi some years ago and they turned it into an audio book and you can get that as a free download as well. Some of it is very mathemetical and it doesn’t lend itself to being in audio necessarily, because you have to see it, but for those people who really like math and numbers, you really might like it, who knows. So “The Joy Of Pi” is at audible.com and if you go to that special url audible podcasts.com/InDesign you can get a freebie. A free book of any of those books and like we said there are about 40,000 different titles there. They have all kinds of great. stuff.

Anne-Marie: Check them out.

David: OK, so let’s see…

Anne-Marie: The news. Do you want to talk about the news?

David: Well let’s see. I want to talk about the 5.01 update–InDesign 5.01 and this is InDesign CS3 but it’s the 5.01 version update which was released by Adobe a couple of days ago and it fixes a lot of stuff. What I was most happy about is it seems to fix most of the index problems people were having when they were indexing books InDesign which was completely messed up. That seems to be fixed now.

Anne-Marie: That’s correct.

David: There were a few other things that got fixed. I actually haven’t tested this yet but I hear that it also fixes the problem when you place an InDesign file inside of another InDesign file how when you made a PDF you got white stripes through it and they wouldn’t print but they would show up on the screen and that was really quite unpleasant.

So, I’m pretty sure a lot of that stuff got fixed. As far as I can tell it’s a must have update–5.01–and you can get it by simply choosing updates from the Help menu within InDesign or you can go to Adobe and download it manually.

Anne-Marie: That’s correct. You can also download the PDF of what was fixed.

David: Right. There’s a long list. Dozens of things.

Anne-Marie: If you want to get depressed.

David: What have I been working with for all this time?

Anne-Marie: Actually, it’s not that long. It’s only because it comes in about 20 different languages.

David: Yes. OK, so the Real World InDesign CS3–I wanted to mention a couple of books that are finally out.

Anne-Marie: Yeah.

David: Here we are months after CS3 ships and Real World InDesign CS3 that Olav Kvern and I wrote are finally off the shelves–off the press and onto the shelves and that’s available. Also, Sandee Cohen’s “Visual Quick Start Guide”, is available. That’s the CS3 visual quick start guide also from Peachpit Press and it is wonderful. So, that is now available so that’s exciting.

Anne-Marie: That is exciting.

David: Yeah, and also our contributor Pariah Burke also has a book out which is InDesign CS3. Is it “Mastering CS3″ or “Mastering CS3 for Print Design and Production” from Sybex. That is very nice. It’s full color and there’s lots of good information in there as well. So definitely check those out. Also–there’s always more–the video book combo–Lynda.com and Peachpit are doing this combo deal where they’re taking some of the videos and they’re mixing it with books–little tiny paperbook books so you actually go to the bookstore and you buy a book which has the videos in the back. It’s kind of a clever idea so we’re going to see how it goes. The book has time codes in it so you see a visual screen shot from the video and say “I’d like to go learn about that.” or you can just either read about it a little bit. Or you can watch the video at that time code and jump right to it. So, that’s kind of a cool thing that they’re doing if you want to see those videos. One of those book video combos is my “InDesign Essential Training” that I did for Lynda.com. It’s not the entire essential training title but it is a good chunk of it.

Anne-Marie: Really?

David: Yeah, so if you’ve already gotten the DVD then you’ve already seen it or if you’ve already subscribed to Lynda.com and you’ve seen the essential training there on Lynda.com then I suppose there’s no reason to get the book. But, if you haven’t seen those then the book is a nice easy entry and it’s not nearly as expensive as getting the full title.

Anne-Marie: Hmm. Interesting. You know while we’re talking about books I should just mention–though they’re not available right now we should talk about two other books from good friends of ours, people who are also well known in the InDesign community. They’re coming out with their first books and they’re about InDesign. One of them is from my buddy Jim Maivald, it’s going to be called “A Designer’s Guide to Adobe InDesign and XML”. Finally…

David: I am so looking forward to that book.

Anne-Marie: Yes, me too.

David: Jim, finish it.

Anne-Marie: [laughs] The subtitle is “Harness the Power of XML to Automate your Print and Web Workflows.” I get asked that all the time and I can’t wait to get that book. That’s supposed to come out in November. So, we’ll keep our fingers crossed. And by the way, the co-author is Cathy Palmer who is also a wonderful trainer, based up here in Wisconsin.

David: And Jim is actually doing an XML fundamental session next week…

Anne-Marie: That’s right.

David: …at the Creative Suite Conference. So, if you’re in Chicago you might check that tutorial, that’s going to be very cool.

Anne-Marie: It’s so neat to see all this happen. I’ve known Jim for bazillion years and I think that I introduced him to the editor to get this book done because I know he was talking about it for a long time. So, I’m glad to see it’s finally happening. And Jim is now the leader of the Chicago InDesign user group. So, he’s completely into InDesign. The other book by a first time author and a luminary in our field is Scott Citron. Scott Citron is coming out with a Book “Professional Design Techniques with Adobe Creative Suite 3″ and that’s supposed to come out in December, I think.

David: Yes. That too I’m looking forward to. Go Scott. Go Scott, finish the book.

Anne-Marie: [laughs]

David: I think they’re almost done.

Anne-Marie: Doesn’t Scott do a lot of the design for the InDesign Magazine and the conferences and all that stuff?

David: He did. Well, he–a lot of stuff at the conferences and he’s a wonderful designer and I think that’s going to be a great book where he puts a lot of his design sense into the book where you can learn not just about how to use the programs but how to use the programs to make good looking stuff, which is always a trick. [laughs]

Anne-Marie: Right.

David: So, I’m looking forward to that one as always and that is going to be good. And this is very positive and very upbeat of you, Anne-Marie, all of a sudden.

Anne-Marie: [laughs]

David: You seem very happy about these books. I’m surprised.

Anne-Marie: Well, I like to see other people do a lot of work.

David: [laughs]

Anne-Marie: Yeah. [laughs]

David: It is a lot of work. No doubt about that. OK, some other news that we should move onto. We mentioned last time in Episode 61, the Keyboard Shortcuts plug-in; free plug-in but if you missed Episode 61, we should mention there’s now a new free plug-in which is jointly done by InDesignSecrets.com and DTP Tools and we’ll put a link there on the show notes.

But if you just go to dtptools.com you’ll find it, I’m sure. Just all kind of cool keyboard shortcuts stuff. You know, sometime ago we mentioned that there was going to be a new InDesign user group starting up in London but it took them a little while to get things up and running and they’re now having their first meeting. In fact, we have a little audio invite that–let’s just play that for you and you can hear.

Anne-Marie: OK.

Tony Harmer: Hi, David. Hi, Anne-Marie. It’s Tony Harmer here from the London InDesign User Group. I thought that InDesign Secrets listeners in the UK, especially those in London, the South and Southeast would like to know that our first meeting will be taking place on the 16th of October from 6 p.m. at the ICO. That’s the International Coffee Organization, which is on Berners Street just off Oxford Circus.

We’re going to be lucky enough to have the InDesign product manager there with us and he’s going to be showing tips and techniques in unveiling the spectacular features of InDesign CS3. So, we’re looking for existing users. We’re looking for new users and those who are considering the switch to InDesign. It’s easy to register and totally free. All you need to do is go InDesignusergroup.com and sign up. See you there.

Anne-Marie: Well, thank you Tony, that was wonderful.

David: Yes, I’m looking forward to that meeting. Unfortunately, I can’t be there but as he said, Michael Ninnes will be there, the product manager on InDesign and that will going to be great. You know these user groups and he said the URL for the InDesignusergroup.com, that is a great place to go–first of all to find out if there’s a user group anywhere near you, anywhere in the world because they’re all over, right? In Melbourne, Sydney, Italy, now London, all over the States, they’re popping up everywhere. So, check out to find out if. There’s one near you and also there’s just cool stuff at that website that they’ve posted there. So, even if you’re not anywhere near one of those, if you–I don’t know–live on an island somewhere in the middle of nowhere, check out that website and you can find all kinds of cools things including notes from their meetings all over the world and photographs but also cool InDesign stuff. So, definitely check that out.

Anne-Marie: Oh, yeah. I wish I could go to one of those London InDesign user group meetings. I emailed them later, I asked them what snacks they would serve. Here in the U.S., we often get pizza…

David: [laughing]

Anne-Marie: …before the InDesign user group. I asked him if he was going to serve scones?

David: [laughing]

Anne-Marie: Or maybe bangers and mash though they might get a little messy, I don’t know.

David: Yeah. Yeah, I think so.

Anne-Marie: He thought maybe tea and crumpets.

David: Tea and crumpets, excellent.

Anne-Marie: Watercress sandwiches. Goes well with spice.

David: [laughs] It goes very well with InDesign, yeah. Hmm, I like it.

Anne-Marie: OK. [laughs]

David: You’re making me hungry.

Anne-Marie: All right. So, we want to talk about another resource that we’ve never mentioned for downloading free or low cost InDesign scripts and templates and tutorials and that is the Adobe Exchange.

David: Yeah. Yup.

Anne-Marie: And you’ll find it if you go to the Adobe website and go to–where is that?–Communities and then scroll down to Exchange and choose that and it says “Exchange Beta,” which you’d pass at for about the past year because I think they’re trying to merge their old resources site with the Macromedia site.

David: Exactly.

Anne-Marie: It’s called the Adobe Exchange Beta and you can click any of the products listed. InDesign has listed Illustrator, Photoshop, and then you can see what people have uploaded to the InDesign exchange and you can download them yourself.

David: It’s a great, great service and it’s sad that it’s…

Anne-Marie: It could be great.

David: [laughs] It could be great. I supposed that’s a better way to put it; it could be great.

Anne-Marie: It was great. It was great.

David: It was great and then they changed it and it’s gotten really, really old. So, virtually everything certainly in the InDesign section is really old, like more than a year old or almost a year old. And so…

Anne-Marie: But we don’t know why.

David: Huh?

Anne-Marie: We don’t know why. You and I were talking about this for the past…

David: Well, yeah and I think what you said about them merging the Macromedia and the Adobe stuff together, I think that’s what happened and they basically–either the person who was in charge of that is AWOL or I just have no idea. But it’s…

Anne-Marie: Yeah. It’s probably number 932 on their list of priorities.

David: Right.

Anne-Marie: Is to update the InDesign Exchange.

David: Which is sad and we’re hoping that our talking about it will light a fire under someone because it could be great, that’s a great way to put it. But, even if it’s not great yet, there is still some very good stuff up there that I wanted to mention.

Anne-Marie: Sure.

David: And this came up for me recently because somebody was emailing me about how to make calendars. I want to make a calendar for 2008 and blah, blah. Are there any good calendar templates? So, I went to the Exchange and I looked and there are lots of templates for…

Anne-Marie: 2007.

David: 2007, 2006, 2005 [laughs] but there’s nothing for 2008 yet and who knows when there would be.

Anne-Marie: Well, you could just change it to 2008 and hope your client doesn’t notice.

David: That’s a good idea. Yeah, it’s great.

Anne-Marie: Yeah. You can just swipe over 2007 and type 2008. Obviously, you’d have to go through every month and change when the dates start.

David: Right.

Anne-Marie: Actually, you’d need to do more than that. You’d need to change Easter and Passover and all that kind of stuff.

David: All that kind of stuff. But fortunately there are a couple of resources up there which will help even if you want 2008, real 2008…

Anne-Marie: Yeah, the bones are there.

David: One is, there is a template that you can get. It has what they call a 25-year calendar and basically, you just choose which type of year each month should be and they’ve got a master page for each type of year. Does it start on a Monday? Does it start on a Tuesday? Does it start on a Wednesday? Etcetera. There is a finite number of types of months.

Anne-Marie: Well that’s cool.

David: So that’s one thing you can get. The other thing you can get up there is, it’s called, Calendar Wizard. It says it only works for CS or CS2 but I just tried it with CS3 and it seems to work great. It will build calendars for you. You say what month do you want. I want to start on October and end on June 2008, whatever you want and it will build calendars for you; one per page, four per page or twelve per page, whatever you want. It’s really, really awesome and it’s a free script! You just download it, put it in your scripts folder, run it from with InDesign. It’s kind of magic.

So that is a very cool little thing that people should know about. There are lots of other templates up there as well. If you want to build a CD for a jewel case–you’ve got a jewel case and you need a template for it–go to the exchange and get the template. It’s really, really cool. There are lots of templates up there and sure, they are a year or two, three years old but they work fine in CS2 or CS3, whatever you’re using.

Anne-Marie: Yeah that’s truth, there’s a 12-up business card template, there are label templates, things like that.

David: There are libraries of registration marks and printer marks and stuff I saw that was up there. There is a lot of kind of stuff.

So anyway, we hope that Adobe will get going and get that exchange up to date sooner rather than later, but in the meantime there is still some good stuff out there. Adobe has had trouble with other stuff this week as well.

Anne-Marie: Oh, the forums.

David: Yeah, the Adobe forums have just gone completely kabloowie. They went from being down for over a day to being just hobbled and so if you’re having trouble with Adobe forums, it’s not just you; it’s the whole thing. So we’re hoping that Adobe will get that up and running as well.

Anne-Marie: I know that has got to be high up in their priority list because those forums get a lot of traffic.

David: Oh yeah. That one definitely, they are trying to fix. We know. OK let’s do a couple of other things we should talk about. The hot button topics of the week eek, eek, eek. [laughter]

Anne-Marie: One was Sandee’s posted about how she just learned how you can add to the list of page sizes in the drop down menu in the New Document dialog box. You know the one that starts with letter, legal, tabloid, that kind of thing? There is a file that you can edit that will allow you to add other kind of pages sizes to this. So your custom in-house page sizes that you use a lot. And that got a lot of response.

David: Right. For example, my Real World Books are all seven by nine, I think, or something like that. I have to go look it up. I don’t actually remember any more.

Anne-Marie: Seven picas by nine picas is pretty small.

David: Inches. Inches! Inches!

Anne-Marie: That’s why it is 912 pages. [laughs]

David: Exactly. I just save it as a pre-set so I don’t even have to think about how big they are because I just grab it right out of that pop-up menu.

Anne-Marie: But it’s different than a pre-set.

David: OK. Technically, you’re right.

Anne-Marie: We all know how to create a pre-set. She’s talking about the page size drop down.

David: Right but I can pull it out of that page size drop down and I just call it the Real World book size.

Anne-Marie: I know. I had that set up in CS2 under page size. I used to do a lot of posters for a couple of non-profits. I had poster listed because I could never remember what was the default size for a regular poster. It seems weird that it’s not there but compact disk is there.

David: That is kind of weird. [laughs] But you can make your own. It’s a simple thing to do with it. You just change the text file and Sandee shows how to do that. So check out that post; that was very interesting.

The other one was your curmudgeonly crabby rant.

Anne-Marie: That’s right.

David: This is where all this began about wanting to transform objects individually.

Anne-Marie: Yeah. Yeah and it’s cool to see that Michael Ninness popped in and added a comment today about ideas for how this should work in upcoming versions. Michael Ninness is the product manager for InDesign so it’s really neat to see that he’s reading our blog–that’s wonderful!–and thinking about it.

My curmudgeonly post had to do with you’ve got a selection of objects and you want to rotate them all say, 45 degrees, each individual object rotating around its own center point. You can’t do that in InDesign. You can go to the Object menu and choose Transform Again Individually. So if you had already rotated something 45 degrees you could select a bunch of things and then go to Transform Again Individually, but there is no “transform in the first place individually.”

David: [laughs] Right. Just do it the first time.

Anne-Marie: And so I was whining about that. And somebody reminded me, “You’re probably thinking of Transform Each from Illustrator.” And I’m like, “Yeah, you’re absolutely right, yeah.” Illustrator does have that; they have a Transform Each so I was like, we want Transform Each in CS4 or maybe CS5, something like that.

David: There was some interesting discussion there after that about how close InDesign is getting to Illustrator and do we want all the Illustrator features into InDesign and so on. I personally believe that people just shouldn’t worry about that. I mean there is no way that all of Illustrator will ever get into InDesign and there will always be a place for Illustrator but then there is a lot of Illustrator type stuff which just should be in InDesign; it’s page layout kind of stuff.

Same thing with Photoshop and InDesign. A lot of people say, “Well we don’t want all that Photoshop kind of stuff in InDesign. My point is anything that is a global change, I should be able to do in InDesign. So like the whole ability to do bevels, beveled text or something. Why shouldn’t I be able to do that in InDesign? That is perfect for InDesign. I would like Adobe to go farther and let me do things like curves, hue saturation and that kind of stuff, levels right on my page.

Anne-Marie: Like Quark used to let you do.

David: Like QuarkXPress lets you do.

Anne-Marie: Hello? Hello?

David: Hello? Yes. Yes. Yeah. You’re right. QuarkXPress lets you do that now.

Anne-Marie: A little scary there in QuarkXPress but yeah. Why not?

David: Absolutely. If I want to do a curves tweak to do some kind of special effect on an image, I would rather do it in InDesign where I can actually see how it looks on the rest of my page, alongside the rest of my page, than in a pure state in Photoshop. So, now granted, I don’t want all the pixel editing tools that Photoshop has. If I want to start editing pixels, like retouching or something, that is a Photoshop thing. Leave it in Photoshop. Yeah. I would love to have more global kind of changes in InDesign itself.

Anne-Marie: You know what I think would be cool? What I think would be cool is, when you Option or Alt-double click on an image to Edit Original, instead of this file opening up in its other program, the program would go like… InDesign would go like “vroo” [laughter] and the current interface would sort of fade to black and a temporary interface of all of the Photoshop tools would appear.

David: Ooh!

Anne-Marie: So you could edit the image right inside the layout. You could still see the layout but it’s kind of screened back. You know what I mean?

David: That would be so cool.

Anne-Marie: It’s kind of that user interface animation that CS3 is using now where things sort of fade out and fade in as you switch apps.

David: Yeah.

Anne-Marie: Something like that.

David: But it has, has to be that sound effect alright! It has to go [sound] like [sound].

Anne-Marie: Right, and then when you click confirm or accept or enter, then one of those things fade away in your back, looking at the normal InDesign interface.

David: But again with the sound the effect. But if that…that way [sound].

Anne-Marie: Same thing for Illustrator and Flash files, why not?

David: Right. Yeah! I love it. I love it. OK!

Anne-Marie: OK! Good, just you do that [sound].

[laughter]

David: OK! So the quiz [laughter] like Quizzler [laughter] [sound]. The Quizzler is, oh, last week did a Quizzler and for the Quizzler the question was what keyboard shortcut, because we came out everything having with keyboard shortcuts last time. So which keyboard shortcut like Command-A, Command-T, Command-M, whatever command, Command-5, which keyboard shortcut does not do anything. Which one did Adobe actually forget to assign anything. Hold on the Command key or Control or Windows and press one of the key on the keyboard, what does not do anything?

Anne-Marie: Yes, so Control-A, Control-S, Control-Q, Control-W, Control-1, Control-2, all those do something.

David: Yeah.

Anne-Marie: All the letters and the numbers and the punctuation do something, but there is one of those alphanumerics that does nothing combined with the Command or Control key.

David: And I asked…I asked somebody on the development team and he said, “Yeah, I think we just forgot that.” They just forgot that was there. So that’s…so they are probably going to grab it for something.

Anne-Marie: You know, we had sort of like a secret reason for using that as a Quizzler because one of the fastest ways to figure out the answer would be to use the keyboard shortcuts plug in. Right?

Anne-Marie: Right.

Anne-Marie: We talked about.

David: Right.

Anne-Marie: Because you could just open up that the Keyboard Shortcuts panel and then in the fields start typing Command-1, Command-2, Command-3, Command-4 and see which one does not have a match.

David: Right. And you would find a match pretty quickly if you do that because the answer is, drumroll please [sound], Command or Control…

Anne-Marie: Command-7.

David: 7, there we go, saying at the same time. Control-7 does not have any keyboard shortcut and the winner of this Quizzler goes to David Glover of Glendale Community College, in beautiful Glendale, California.

Anne-Marie: Congratulations!

David: Congratulations! We are going to be sending you posters, I think there were three posters that we are sending…

Anne-Marie: Yes, three posters.

David: Three posters because we were making a point that, you know, we have this keyboard shortcut posters for sale, and, but if you buy more than two or three of them, you get a big discount. So, in this case you are going to get them for free. So you don’t have to worry about the discount. But for everyone else, buy ‘em in bulk. All right.

Anne-Marie: So, we will need your contact information, mailing address or that kind of stuff, just email it to info @ InDesignSecrets or we will get in contact with you.

David: Yeah, excellent.

Anne-Marie: OK.

David: Congratulations! It’s cool.

David: Lets see. The obscure InDesign feature of the week is miters, or miter not.

Anne-Marie: Miters.

David: Maybe she will, maybe she won’t.

David: May be…maybe she will, maybe she won’t. [laughter]

Anne-Marie: Stop, Dod.

David: Miter. Miter join.

Anne-Marie: Miter cap.

David: What is the miter? The miter has to do with sharp angles, like…like Anne’s sharp elbows, that’s she is throwing out right now.

Anne-Marie: Here you go.

David: [Sound] That’s right. The miter, what do you want to have happened to this sharp corners when you have a really big stroke on them and people have been using Illustrator for a long time have probably seen this, because this is a typical illustration, I think. And It shows up in InDesign in the Strokes panel, or CS2 Strokes pallete what everyone calls it.

Anne-Marie: Or may be the Stroke panel, you want to be accurate about it.

David: Or, is it just Stroke? What if you have more than one?

Anne-Marie: I have just continued to say stroke.

David: Oh, well! There you go. Oh well. [laughter] But there is three options in there and I should probably open this so I could tell you what they are.

Anne-Marie: The options for miter joints, are the miter joint, round joint and a bevel joint.

David: Right.

Anne-Marie: And I believe that, which one is the default? I think the second one, the round joint.

David: No, no. The miter is the…

Anne-Marie: Oh, yeah! Right, the miter joint.

David: default and the…

Anne-Marie: Is the sharp one.

David: Is the sharp one. Very sharp corners and the bigger you stroke, typically in the more acute the angle, the longer, that…that point is going to stick beyond, beyond the path itself. If you don’t like those really long miter joints, then you would want to switch to like a round one or a bevel joint which will can be rounded off just. Those who are actually originally from Postscript–an obscure fact here–those are built into the Postscript imaging model and have been since version one of Postscript that you can set for any stroke a miter or a round or a bevel. So, this actually goes right into Postscript and so they just say, you know, actually I think is 012 and you…you get that kind of joint. A miter of course, any carpenter is also aware of a miter because a miter, as you take two piece of wood and you cut them off in angels, and stick them together and you get a nice, very sharp pointy corner.

Anne-Marie: Yeah, exactly so you have, when the default miter joint is enabled then also you can edit the field from miter limit.

David: Oh, yeah! That’s it is.

Anne-Marie: Which is how far the joint can extend in pixels. Isn’t it?

David: Oh, my goodness! I should look that up.

Anne-Marie: I think it’s points or pixels. Yeah, you should look. I thought you read the book.

[laughter]

David: I don’t think it’s in pixels. I think its actually, it has to do with how acute the angle needs to be before it kicks in and I…

Anne-Marie: With the default measure, whatever it is measuring there, it has no, it does not say pt or enter anything, right. It is just form. But you can test it yourself by creating like with the Pen tool, just create a triangle or actually just draw out a triangle if you want and then with the selection tool resize it so that one of the angles is really sharp.

David: Really sharp.

Anne-Marie: Really sharp and then give it a good thick stroke like 10 point to 20 points and then watch what happens to those sharp angles where they join. If you open the stroke panel and start playing with the limits of the miter, you will see that if you bring it too low, then it sort of cuts off the edge. The sharp–

David: It picks up a bevel. It sort of reversed to a bevel and the point there is you don’t have these…these sharp corners that go off basically to infinity.

Anne-Marie: Yeah, and beyond.

David: And beyond. So, that was that’s all about. But what exactly that number is, that is even more obscure than the obscure InDesign feature of the week and we are going to have cover that in another day or a podcast or may be we will put it in the show notes. I will go, look that up and put in the show notes. That’s probably the way to go.

Anne-Marie: OK.

David: OK.

Anne-Marie: Well, that’s it for Episode 62 and thank you all so much for coming and joining us. Be sure to check out show notes and our blog at InDesignSecrets.com. Where we will have links to all the places we mentioned and we would love to hear what you thought of the shows. So leave a comment there. Or, of course, you can email us at info @ InDesignSecrets.com and until we meet again. This is Anne-Marie and…

David: David Blatner for InDesign Secrets.

[Musical interlude]

To hear the audio episode from which this transcript was made, or to comment on this episode, go to the InDesignSecrets Podcast 062 page.