InDesigning.net

As I wrote about back in march I was wishing for inline text boxes. Boxes flowing with the text, that also should be able to "break" across text columns etc.

To fulfill my wish I wrote a small script, creating a more flexible workaround. Other workarounds was also mentioned in the old article, but this is an automated alternative to another manual approach, drawing a frame behind the given text.

An example of the automatic result.

How the frame is supposed to look is defined by an object style, but furthermore it allows you to add a padding around the the box, so you are not limited by the text frame the text is in.

To make sure the frame is placed behind the text, they are all put in their own layer.

The layer palette with the required layer.

The script also allows you to have more than one kind of box texts, you just have to set up your document correctly. For it to work it will need the following:

• A layer with the name "Boxes" placed lower than the text
• For each text box style, an object style named like "Box: Blue boxes"
• A paragraph style with the same name as the object style, but without the "Box: " prefix

For an example of this setup, please download the sample document from this page.

Paragraphs and object styles.

The object style you define are applied to the boxes, this allows you to define e.g. fill color, transparency, strokes etc.

To add a padding to the box, define an inset spacing in the the object styles Text Frame General OptionsCrop Amount in Frame Fitting Options.

Defining the padding as Crop Amount

When you run the script, the boxes will be added behind all the text marked up with one of your box text paragraph styles, but please note that they will not "follow" the text as you type. Don't worry though, you can always run the script again, and it will rearrange the boxes.

The script

The JavaScript can be downloaded here: automatic_text_boxes_1.1.zip.

You can add it to your Scripts palette and run it from there. To do that, place the file inside the "~/Library/Preferences/Adobe InDesign/Version 6.0/Scripts/Scripts Panel" folder.

Changelog

1.1: Added support for "negative padding" - making the boxes smaller than the width of the column.

It has been quiet here for too long - it is really time to get moving again. A lot of the quietness I have to blame on my holiday, which by the way was great. 3 weeks off work, relaxing with family and friends. And our daughter really have grown a lot the last couple of months, and as late as today she began walking on her own - in other words, she is now aware she is capable of walking, earlier she didn't dare to walk unless she didn't think about it.

During the holidays I had the chance of taking wedding photos of friends of mine, and I would like to just share a few of the photos here. The rest can be found on Flickr.

Multi-exposure shot of the happy couple.

Rock star bride.

This post, I am sorry, is just an update on the situation - no real InDesign goodies for you right now. Please contact me if you have ideas for topics, and I will gladly write about it. But as an InDesign related event, I can share that i took the Adobe Certified Expert InDesign CS4 exam last week and passed. And I must admit the test was harder than expected, but luckily I passed it anyways.

Another slightly InDesign related news, is that we finished our Design & Production bible at 2Krogh. The book is a joint project with Jongbloed and is a book describing every step in Bible production from design through typesetting, prepress, paper selection, printing and binding to logistics, distribution and warehousing.

11 of our Bible and Hymnbooks design are printed on 8 different paper qualities, weights and tints from Bolloré, with different secondary PMS colours. This is really a unique book, and I can't wait to show it off.

Currently the book is not for sale, but as soon as it is, if it will be, I will make sure to let you know.

Design & Production bible.

Design & Production bible.

Design & Production bible.

I would like to introduce a new series of blog posts on InDesigning.net - "Ask InDesigning.net". I love to help people out with their frustrations, problems, issues or whatever with InDesign, often doing this on Twitter anyways, so why not collect some of the most common problems and answer them in a series of articles here on the blog?

If you have any general questions, e.g. "How can I handle multiple indexes?", "What is the easiest way of formatting a table" or "How can I solve this GREP search specific issue?", I will try to answer them as good as I can, and if I stumble across things I cannot answer I will try to research it or get another person to write the answer instead.

If you have any questions, please comment it on the blog, contact me or tweet me.

With more regular followers on the blog I think it is time to throw out a request for wishes of new guides, features and scripts.

Do you have any specific requests or ideas for new topics or series of articles, I would really like to hear them. I can't promise I'll write about everything, but I will prioritise user requests.

Also, I would like to hear what content you prefer prioritised on the blog, guides on different user levels, scripts, screencasts etc. - be sure to add further comments below.

Otherwise, I am always open to suggestions for new things, guest posts etc. Just comment here or contact me on Twitter.

Based on the principles of my Creating and organising styles article, I have created an InDesign document with a bunch of predefined styles.

The styles are build quite logical and easy to modify.

The idea is for you to download and get a great head start for creating styles for a project, or simply just to use them for eg. a CV, brochure, newsletter etc.

The template is based on using an OpenType Serif/Sans-Serif mix, and in this case I have used FontFont's Meta Serif/Sans Pro, but can easily be changed to another pair of fonts.

Use the style for creating eg. CV's.

Support for multiple levels of bullet and numbered lists.

Besides directly using or modifying the styles, exploring the file will give you some great ideas of how to achieve different things through paragraph and character styles.

The file contains the following features and more:

• Semantically named paragraph and character styles
• 3 subheading levels, with and without automatic numbering
• Bullet and numbered lists in 2 levels
• Paragraph with and without indents
• Drop cap paragraph
• Quote
• Table style
• Text box styles
• Caption
• Text formatting styles
• Footnote layout

Styles for tables.

The InDesign file contains table styles, character styles and paragraph styles. To import these in another document you need to use "Load All Text Styles..." from the paragraph style panel menu, and "Load Table and Cell Styles..." from the table panel menu.

Download a PDF to see the different styles or download the InDesign file to get started.

The file is made in Adobe InDesign CS4.