InDesign Magazine 88: The InDesign Script-o

Transcription

M A G A Z I N E 88
August 2016
> Excel and XML: A Powerful Duo
> Meet the InDesign Scripters
> Ebook Design
T
Fun
Output
Interactive
Colors
Images
Documents
Layout
Tables
Text
The InDesign Script-o-pedia
InSide: Table of Contents
5
Erica Gamet brings together a collection of some
of the coolest and most useful InDesign scripts.
20
Scripting Stories
David Blatner got five of the world’s top InDesign
scripters to tell how they got started.
26
37
38
InStep: Excel to InDesign Via XML
Chad Chelius shows how to maximize your design
options when using Excel data in your layouts.
GREP of the Month: Negation
Bart Van de Wiele shows how to exclude one or
more characters in your GREP expressions.
InDesigner: Brady Type
Anne-Marie Concepción provides a close-up glimpse of
Laura Brady’s ebook design and development work.
INDESIGN MAGAZINE 88 August 2016
Best of the Blog A collection of the most important and
informative articles from InDesignSecrets
46
Three More Great Ways to Add Colors
to InDesign Documents
50
Six Tips to Speed Up InDesign
52
Lining Up Baselines Across Frames
without Baseline Grid
54
InDesign Basics: Working With Layers
57
GPU Support and Animated Zoom Arrives (for the Mac)
59
Mystery of the Absent Artwork Contest and Winner!
63
InDex to All Past Issues
2
MAGAZINE
From the Editor in Chief
PUBLISHERS
David Blatner, Anne-Marie Concepción
EDITORIAL
Editor in Chief
Mike Rankin, [email protected]
Managing Editor
Wendy Katz, [email protected]
Contributing Writers
Erica Gamet, Chad Chelius, Bart Van de Wiele,
Steve Werner
DESIGN
Rufus Deuchler
rufus.deuchler.net
BUSINESS
Contact Information
http://indesignsecrets.com/contact
Subscription Information
indesignsecrets.com/issues
Published by InDesignSecrets.com, a division of The Creative
Publishing Network, Inc. Copyright 2016 InDesignSecrets.com. All rights
reserved. Reproduction and redistribution prohibited without approval.
For more information, contact [email protected].
InDesign Magazine is not endorsed or sponsored by Adobe Systems
Incorporated, publisher of InDesign. InDesign is a registered
trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated. All other products and
services are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective
owners and are hereby acknowledged.
Photos on pages 1 and 25 courtesy of Fotolia.com
ISSN 2379-1403
Ever wonder how we get our ideas for articles here at InDesign Magazine? We have
monthly brainstorming meetings in which
we ask ourselves: what would best serve the
InDesign community, what topics and stories
need to be explored, and what would we like
to read?! And in every case, we strive to produce content you can use to improve your
productivity, broaden your abilites, and get
more enjoyment out of using InDesign. So I
am thrilled about this month’s feature article
by Erica Gamet, The InDesign Script-o-pedia,
because it touches all those bases. This article
is the seed from which we plan to grow an
indispensable resource for InDesignSecrets
Premium members: the most complete and
up-to-date catalog of InDesign scripts on the
planet. Building and maintaining it will be an
ongoing effort, and Erica’s article is an exciting preview of where we’re headed, as well
as a great resource in its own right. We’d also
love to hear your thoughts about this project!
Continuing the theme of automation, we
have a fascinating article by David Blatner
in which he interviews several of the top
InDesign scripters to find out how they got
started the realm of automating InDesign.
Chad Chelius’ InStep shows how to harness
the power of XML to build InDesign layouts
from Excel data—and automate the process
of updating those layouts when the Excel
data changes. Very cool stuff!
Bart Van de Wiele is back with another
GREP of the Month, in which he shows how
to use negation in your GREP expressions to
exclude one or more characters.
Anne-Marie Concepción profiles the
wonderful ebook design and production
work of Laura Brady.
The Best of the Blog highlights top new
content from InDesignSecrets.
Enjoy!
3
The Essential Event
for InDesign Users
GRAPHICS • GREP • HTML5 • TYPOGRAPHY • PRINT • EPUB • APPS • ACCESSIBILITY • PDF • STYLES
COLOR • TABLES • LONG DOCUMENTS • SCRIPTS • WORKFLOW • LAYOUT • IDML • PREFLIGHT
TROUBLESHOOTING • INCOPY • PRINT • BLEED • INTERACTIVE • FORMS • DATA • PUBLISH ONLINE
LAYERS • LINKING ANIMATION • LINKS • TIPS & TRICKS • DATA • FONTS • COLOR MANAGEMENT
Conference
NOVEMBER 7–9, 2016
WASHINGTON DC
4
This is the start of something big: The ultimate guide to InDesign scripts
By Erica Gamet
T
Fun
Output
Interactive
Colors
Images
August 2016
Documents
Layout
Tables
Text
INDESIGN MAGAZINE 88 5
InDesign Script-o-pedia
you spend any time reading InDesign Magazine, visiting InDesignSecrets, or attending live events like The
InDesign Conference, you’ll quickly notice how many
folks consider scripts to be indispensable tools in their workflows.
But if you’ve never actually used scripts, you might wonder what all
the fuss is about. Can scripts really make that much of a difference?
Can you use scripts without knowing how to script? Can you actually find scripts for the specific tasks that you need to accomplish?
My short answer: yes, yes, and yes! But if you still think, “Meh, scripts
aren’t for me,” consider the following:
»» If you find yourself repeatedly choosing the same menu functions
in InDesign over and over…you might need a script.
»» If you constantly enter the same values in a dialog box…you
might need a script.
»» If you need to access some obscure functionality in InDesign…
you might need a script.
»» If you just want to get your work done faster…you really ought to
use a script.
Truly, any time you need to automate some task in InDesign (or if
InDesign doesn’t natively offer a function you need) someone might
have already written a script that will get the job done for you.
But where do you go to find InDesign scripts? Of course, you can
Google the phrase of whatever you’re hoping to accomplish plus the
If
words “InDesign script,” and you might get lucky. Or you might end
up spending a lot of time poking around various sites before you
find what you’re looking for. But the whole idea of using scripts is
to stop you from fumbling around and wasting time. That’s why the
editors of this magazine came up with the idea to create an amazing
new resource: the most complete and up-to-date reference guide to
InDesign scripts in the world! They call it The InDesign Script-o-pedia,
and this eponymous article is the first step in the effort to build out
that amazing resource, which will be available at InDesignSecrets.
While this list of scripts (organized into nine categories) barely
scratches the surface of what The InDesign Script-o-pedia will ultimately become, it’s a solid foundation, as well as an eye-opening
testament to what you can achieve when you harness the power of
scripts in InDesign.
Scripts for fees and scripts for free
Most scripts listed in this article are free to download, but
please consider using the Donate buttons on the developers’
websites if you find their scripts useful. It’s not only good
karma, it also encourages those folks to continue cranking out
great tools for us all. Commercial scripts are marked with
.
Scripts marked with
come with InDesign.
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Text and Styles
The following scripts will help you be more efficient
when editing and formatting text.
»» The SetVisualCharStyle script lets you set your type to an exact
size based on a specific character. For example, if you know the
x-height needs to be exactly 1/2 inch, you need only to enter
the “x” character and .5 in. to make that happen.
»» If you need to change numerical data across the board in your
document—for example, increasing all prices in an ad or catalog
by 10%—check out Number Adjuster. You can apply the mathematical function to numbers within a selection, story, or across an
entire document.
Number Adjuster
»» Word stacks—identical words that sit on top of each other in a
paragraph—can be visually distracting. The SmokeWordStacks
script finds those annoying word stacks. When the script finds
a stacked word, it applies a character style with a red underline.
Either use the styling to visually spot the words, or use the Find/
Change dialog box, and then manually adjust the location.
»» Ever need to make type look a bit less flawless and more of the
“touched by human hands” variety? The HumaneType script
delivers with uneven baselines and even allows for text along a
curved path.
HumaneType
»» To change numbers expressed by digits into their written word
counterparts, you can use InDesign’s built-in Find/ChangeByList
script. You’ll need to make some adjustments to the supporting
text file, which you can read all about here. »» The PerfectPrepText script assigns character styles to locally formatted text, even if paragraph styles have been applied to the
text. There are three scripts that come with the PerfectPrep set,
but using the PerfectPrepText_Do is the safest route. (Read more
about the scripts and their history here).
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»» The Search in Styles script lets you perform searches across all
styles—or selected ones—at once. Putting style attribute criteria
into the Find/Change dialog box allows the script to find styles
that have those attributes applied. You can then make changes to
any of the styles as needed. »» Sometimes you’ve manually styled a lot of text before you think
to use styles. The Auto Create Paragraph and Character Styles
script builds styles based on already-formatted text. Each time the
script is run, it compares styled text to existing styles and assigns
them, or creates a new style.
»» Entering characters with diacritics—especially for a language that
your keyboard is not set to—is made somewhat simpler by Peter
Kahrel’s Compose script. To get the proper glyph, either enter one
of the pre-assigned mnemonic codes or the unicode, if applicable. If there is no actual glyph in your chosen font, the script will
even attempt to build one out of the base character and diacritic.
»» If you need line numbering—as opposed to paragraph numbering—InDesign’s built-in tools will leave you out in the cold. The
Number Lines by Style script from In-Tools closes this gap by creating numbers that sit in anchored text frames next to each line.
Object styles are assigned, so updating the individual line numbers is a snap.
Number Lines by Style
Just a Bunch of Text?
Sometimes you have to take a couple of extra steps to get
a script ready to use. If you’ve clicked on a link and see a
screen full of text—or someone has provided only the raw text
in a forum post—you’ll need to put that text into a wrapper
that InDesign can understand.
If the script has been written in JavaScript (a majority of
scripts are, since it’s cross-platform), simply copy the text
and paste it into a text editor. Make sure the text is in plain
text format, and then save that file with the .jsx extension.
Also, you may encounter files that have both .jsx and .txt
extensions. In that case, just remove the .txt extension before
attempting to use the script.
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»» Introduced at PePcon 2014, the oddly-named Swimmer script
swaps out words with inline graphics and vice versa. Just set
the keywords to search for and the necessary graphics, and the
Swimmer script does the rest.
»» Anyone who works with footnotes in InDesign knows how woefully inadequate they are. Lucky for those folks, Peter Kahrel
knows, too, and has created a collection of scripts to deal with the
native shortcomings. The scripts include solutions for converting
footnotes to endnotes or margin notes, converting static endnotes to dynamic ones, adjusting the footnote spacing, and setting multiple notes on one line.
»» StyleLighter allows you to view text styles and overrides in your
document. Each style is displayed in a unique color, giving immediate feedback as to which text has and hasn’t been styled.
»» The ShowFonts script restores functionality that has been
stripped from the Find Font dialog box in more recent versions of
InDesign. The script displays information for each font, including
font name, type, style, and status.
»» When a table of contents is updated, any manual text formatted
is lost. The LiveTOC script holds on to that formatting, even as the
TOC is revised. »» If your favorite typeface is lacking the euro symbol or you
wish you could replace its ampersand, there’s a script for that!
FontMixer lets you borrow characters from one typeface and
place them into another, creating a hybrid font containing the
best (at least in your opinion!) of each typeface.
FontMixer
»» WidowFixer is a one-trick wonder with its simple-yet-powerful
function. The script adds a specific GREP expression to select
paragraph styles that prevents single-word lines at the end of
paragraphs from ever happening. »» The Smart Title Case script very simply converts selected text—
frames or a text selection—to title case. The script rightfully
ignores words like “a” and “the,” but delivers uneven results
depending on if a frame or specific text is first selected.
»» Fractions (especially uncommon ones) can be tricky to craft at
times, even when using OpenType fonts. The Proper Fractions
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scripts format all fractions, and can even ignore number sets (like
dates) it sees as “non-fractions.” »» The SortParagraphs script—which ships with InDesign—can sort
selected paragraphs alphabetically. Looks like laying out that
membership directory just got a whole lot easier, thanks to this
timesaver. »» The GREP window in the Find/Change dialog box and within
GREP styles is painfully small. The GREP Editor script offers a larger
window to work with these complex—and often quite long—expressions. You can also load existing GREP queries from and send
new expressions back to the Find/Change dialog box.
GREP Editor
»» Issues with double spaces, em and en dashes, and justification are
easily fixed with the Detail Typesetting script. This script is part of
the larger InDesign Toolbox, which includes scripts for layout and
text handling.
Installing and Using Scripts
Installing InDesign scripts is super easy. Once you’ve
downloaded—or created—the script file, it’s a matter of drag
and drop. Most scripts live in the Scripts panel within the
InDesign application folder (Adobe InDesign > Scripts >
Scripts Panel), though some need to be placed in the Startup
Scripts panel in that same Scripts folder.
Once installed, scripts are accessible right away; no need
to restart InDesign (though startup scripts will require a
restart). The scripts are then accessed by double-clicking
them in the Scripts panel (Window > Utilities > Scripts).
Depending on the script, you may have to have selected
a frame or text for it to run properly. InDesign comes with
several scripts already set up, which are inside the Samples
folder in the Scripts panel. You can further organize the
scripts by creating subfolders in the Scripts Panel folder in
the Finder/Explorer and arranging them as necessary.
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Layout
These scripts ease problems and speed the process
of crafting page layouts.
»» The Columns2Frames script does just what you might think.
It takes a multi-column text frame and splits it into individual,
threaded text frames.
»» When you use the Duplicate Spread option from the Pages panel
menu, the duplicated spread is placed at the end of the document. This script lets you place the duplicate immediately after
the original page (or spread). You can make quick work of this task
on many spreads by using Page Up and Page Down to navigate
through the pages, and assigning the script a keyboard shortcut.
»» Dave Saunders’ WrapNudger picks up where InDesign’s imperfect
text wrap leaves off. The script can move the wrapped object
while leaving the text as is or adjust where the text wraps, leaving
the object in place.
»» The SplitStory script breaks all links between frames in the selected story, leaving all text in position within each frame.
BreakFrame removes only the selected text frame from a text
thread, without affecting the contents—or flow—of the frames.
Both of these scripts come with InDesign. INDESIGN MAGAZINE 88 August 2016
WrapNudger
»» Layout Zone is a startup script that creates a separate InDesign
file from selected objects in a current document. The newlycreated file can then be inserted into another InDesign file or
back into the original file. That incoming file can even replace the
separate page elements that were used to create it(self ).
»» InDesign’s built-in data merge accommodates only one data record per frame. The Inline Merge script allows multiple records to
be combined into a single text frame, making it perfect for creating directories and other long lists of records from a data file.
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»» Merge Text Frames combines multiple text frames into one allencompassing frame. The script’s options let you choose in what
order the frames are merged, if the text is separated by paragraph returns or tabs, and what size the final merged text frame
should be.
»» InGutter places vertical rules between columns within a text
frame. Those rules extend or shrink as the text frame is resized.
The script gives you control over changing the number of columns, background color, and attributes of the rules themselves.
InGutter
»» Selecting any frame in InDesign and running the built-in Make
Grid script splits the frame into the chosen number of rows and
columns. Options include whether or not to retain the original
frame and if the frame’s content remains. »» The Adjust Layout script moves objects on a page—or range of
pages—a defined amount. Set the vertical and/or horizontal values to move the items, and indicate for the changes to occur on
odd and/or even pages.
Tables
These scripts can take the time and torment
out of working with tables.
»» This clever table cell script is totally worth it, but you have to
enter info into the text file each time you change parameters. It
assigns a cell style to any table cells containing specific text. In a
text editor, you’ll have to assign what that text is and what style to
apply. Create and name a new version of the script for each search
you might want to re-use, and assign a keyboard shortcut for fast
implementation.
»» This script is similar to the previous one, but it assigns a table style
instead of a cell style. Again, you’ll have to enter the style you
want to apply and set the parameters for each search you need
the script to perform.
»» Table styles in InDesign are a great way to format table content,
but they are lacking in the table structure department. The
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Tables Sized to Frame script picks up that slack by automatically
adjusting the table width to the width of the enclosing text frame.
You can also assign an amount for row setting (Exactly or At Least)
and row height.
Before using Tables Sized to Frame
After using Tables Sized to Frame
»» When information is copied and pasted from one table to another
in InDesign, the formatting is stripped out. PopTabUnleashed
retains the text formatting upon paste and even includes an
undo feature.
»» The TableSort script brings the ability to sort table columns to
InDesign. The sorting is limited to only three columns, but you
can sort across an entire table, or sort only selected rows.
»» InDesign’s Table Merge feature merges all selected cells without
regard to columns and rows. Smart Cell Merge lets you select
multiple cells and merge across columns or rows separately.
Documents
The following scripts can supercharge your abilities
to manipulate documents, pages, and layers.
»» Extract Pages brings some Acrobat-like page manipulation
to InDesign. The script lets you select and extract individual
pages from an InDesign document—as single pages or as a
group—and can even create a new InDesign document from the
extracted pages.
»» Calendar Wizard automatically creates calendars in InDesign. The
script lets you customize the starting day of the week, number of
months to display, page orientation, and language. Each element
is further customizable via text styles, and resizing the calendars
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is a snap. The newest version introduces customizable holidays,
savable presets, and three different styles of calendars. Images
Calendar Wizard
»» The aptly-named PasteboardExpander script expands your
pasteboard. If your off-page items are falling off into the void, this
script dynamically increases the pasteboard size to accommodate
those wayward items. The pasteboard is only expanded—to
precisely fit the pasteboard items—on spreads that need to be.
»» When exporting an InDesign book (.indb) file to PDF, one file is
created comprising all the selected document files. The PDF to
Individual Pages script lets you create separate PDF files for each
INDESIGN MAGAZINE 88 book document. Further options include creating separate PDFs
for each individual page or section.
»» MasterMatic is a script that automatically assigns a specific
master page to your document, based on styles. Create pairs
of paragraph or object styles and the masters that should be
assigned to the pages that contain those styles. If content moves
to a new page, the masters are automatically assigned to that
new page. »» The History scripts from In-Tools gives InDesign the same
functionality that the History panel does in Photoshop. The scripts
let you undo or redo actions directly, instead of having to step
through each action successively (using the built-in Undo and
Redo actions).
August 2016
A picture’s worth a thousand words, and these
scripts can save a thousand clicks when working
with placed images.
»» If you placed an image in InDesign without having the Show
Import Options turned on, you’re out of luck if you realize you
wanted to control the incoming crop or which pages of a PDF
to import. Your choices at this point are to re-import the image
(with the Show Import Options checked) or use the rePlace script,
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which gives you access to the import options without having to
go through the process of re-importing the image.
»» The PDF Options Editor script does basically the same thing
as the rePlace script, but deals strictly with the import options
pertaining to PDF files. The linked page is in French, but the
red download button is obvious, and then you choose Extract
PDFOptions Editor in the resulting PDF’s Bookmarks panel.
»» The CaptionsAlt script from Peter Kahrel performs a simple task
that could be quite time-consuming in a file with many images. It
simply applies any text from an image’s caption—select the text
frame and image so it pairs up the right caption—to the Alt Text
section of the Object Export Options dialog box.
»» Keith Gilbert’s Export to JPEG set of scripts lets you export
from InDesign to exact pixel dimensions, as opposed to a set
resolution. There are three scripts in the bundle: one each for
exporting the current selection, the entire document, or a range
of pages or spreads.
Export to JPEG
»» The Folder2CSV script creates a .csv file listing all images in a
specified folder. Even though the script is run from InDesign,
the images don’t have to be in any InDesign document. Where
InDesign comes back into play is if you use the Data Merge
feature along with that .csv file to lay out those images quickly
in your document. This process makes it easy to create a contact
sheet or place a single image per page automatically.
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»» The DeleteAllImages script will delete the image content of
frames, leaving each frame itself in place. Select one or more
frames and run the script to delete those images, or select
nothing to have it delete all images in your document.
»» The ImageCatalog script—which comes with InDesign—arranges
all images from a specified folder into a contact sheet layout on
the page. When creating the layout, choose whether or not to use
the images’ metadata to generate static captions. »» Releasing an anchored object is easy, but not so much with an
inline object. The ReleaseAnyAnchor script fixes that problem by
detaching an inline object from its text frame while leaving the
object sitting in the same position on the page.
Colors and Swatches
RGB? CMYK? LAB? You can handle them all PDQ
with the help of these scripts.
»» This simple script removes an image frame’s fill color while leaving
the image intact. It works on any shape of image frame and only
removes the fill from shapes that actually contain an image.
»» A user-submitted script does the grunt work in tidying up an
InDesign document’s swatches. Scroll to the end of the forum
thread to get the script that removes all unused swatches, adds
any used—but unnamed—colors to the Swatches panel, and
converts the swatches to CMYK process.
»» SwatchWatch is a script that creates sample swatches for each
color in your Swatches panel. It places those swatches at the
end of your document and indicates the swatch name and color
values. The script will even create swatches for spot colors in
placed images, and can be rerun as colors are altered, added to, or
deleted from your document.
SwatchWatch
Interactive
These scripts can help you make quick work of
hyperlinks, multi-state objects, forms, and more.
»» If you work with a lot of hyperlinks in your InDesign documents,
you probably spend a lot of time cleaning up and shortening
the visible URLs. While it’s a good idea to use the full URL in the
Hyperlinks panel, you may want your reader to see a considerably
16
smaller one (perhaps even leaving off the www). The Paste And
Format URL script automates the process, leaving the hyperlink
intact while displaying only the part of the URL you need to see.
»» Entering information into a combo box or list box when working
with interactive forms in InDesign involves listing each item
separately. However, the free ComboMambo script lets you
import the contents of an existing plain text (TXT) file to populate
the list field.
»» Creating a cross-reference involves referencing either a target text
anchor—which you first have to insert—or a specified paragraph
style, and then creating the cross-ref. The QuickReference script
lets you work in reverse! First select the text for your cross-ref,
and then run the script, which will find all the occurrences of that
same text.
»» The Digital Publishing Pack contains seven scripts that make
working with multi-state objects (MSOs) in InDesign easier. The
scripts automate adding an item to all object states, automatically
creating hide and reveal buttons, and quickly creating the MSO
with a visible and hidden state upon creation. INDESIGN MAGAZINE 88 August 2016
Output
PDF, PSD, PNG, and a plethora of other outputs will
be easy as peach pie with the help of these scripts.
»» Colin Flashman’s Data Merge to Unique Names script lets you
export directly to PDF files (and to individual InDesign files)
from a data merge operation. Those individual files can also be
uniquely named, automatically, from within the script’s interface.
Bonus deal: You can convert any generated InDesign files to other
formats using the Batch Convert script below.
»» The Batch Convert script lets you, well, batch convert multiple
InDesign files (within a given folder) to a variety of file formats.
Choose from PDF, IDML, PNG, JPG, XML, and more as the final
output file type. There is also an option to choose a preset,
depending on the chosen output file type.
»» Use the PageToPSLayers script to effectively export a layered
InDesign file to a layered Photoshop file. All layers—including
hidden, locked, and empty ones—get exported, and layer names
are maintained. On export, choose whether to import the layers
as smart objects or as rasterized images.
17
Fun
With these scripts, you can add fun to your work
with cool design effects; there’s even a game you
can play in InDesign!
»» SiliconPublishing has a collection of fun drawing scripts as part
of their publishing scripts collection. Fractalize creates fractal
patterns from a shape, while Explode breaks out individual paths
from a shape. MysticRose and NINA create shapes that mimic
string art and spirographs, respectively.
»» The Wordalizer script generates a word cloud from text in a frame,
book, document, or clipboard contents. You can choose from the
included themes or create and save custom settings. Wordalizer
also gives you control over the size and positioning of each word
in the finished word cloud. »» The built-in PathEffects script gives you object effect options
similar to Illustrator’s Distort & Transform. Options include punk,
bloat, and twirl, and all effects are completely editable. »» Sometimes you need a break from actual work in InDesign.
InTetris puts the classic arcade game right inside InDesign for
those times when you need a moment away from work. While not
as robust as the full arcade version (why is there no “next object”
preview?), InTetris is a fun diversion.
InTetris
»» The Scribbler script randomly shifts text off the baseline to give it
a bit of an uneven feel. While I wouldn’t recommend using it on
the text of your next novel, it can be used effectively on informal
or lighthearted text and content designed for children.
Wordalizer
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»» Using the Speeech (not a typo) script is the easiest way to
create a cartoonish speech bubble. Simply create a frame with a
connector line, and the script does the rest.
Stick to the Scripts
So there you have it: a wide-ranging, inspiration-bringing sample of
the most essential, useful, and cool InDesign scripts. Just remember,
any time you’re struggling with a repetitive, time-consuming task in
InDesign, there’s probably a script that can help, and The InDesign
Script-o-pedia will be the place to find it.
n
Erica Gamet is a speaker, writer, and trainer, focusing on Adobe InDesign and Illustrator,
Apple Keynote and iBooks Author, and other production-related topics. With over 25 years
experience in the graphics industry, she is a regular contributor to CreativePro.com. After
living as a nomad, she recently put down roots in El Paso, Texas, where she hikes and bikes
every chance she gets.
Resources
There are hundreds of other InDesign scripts available on
the Web. Until we can get our own InDesignSecrets online
database of scripts fully up and running, here are some
web sites that you should definitely check out for more
scripting goodness.
Creative Cloud Add-Ons
Zevrix Software
In-Tools
Teacup Software
Rorohiko (Lightning Brain)
InDesignSecrets
Indiscripts
Creative Scripting
Peter Kahrel
Silicon Publishing
Ctrl Publishing
Ajar Productions
Gluon Software
Gilbert Consulting
Loic Aigon’s scripts
Colin Flashman
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Compiled by David Blatner
Scripting Stories
We asked five of the world’s top InDesign
scripters how they got started.
“What first brought you to scripting InDesign?
Were you a programmer first or a designer?”
Justin Putney
Justin Putney
Ajarproductions.com
I was a designer first. I was aiming for
multimedia and animation but started my
career in a small market in the Midwest,
where there was only about one job posting
per month for a graphic designer. Each
opportunity was very competitive, so I
had to know all types of graphic design,
including print. At the time, InDesign was
about neck-and-neck with QuarkXPress, but
I decided to go all-in on InDesign. I got a
job that was very heavy on print production,
but after a year they allowed me to take
on Flash projects. The team appreciated my
coding skills, so I kept learning more.
I never wanted to be a coder. (I avoided
Computer Science like the plague in
school… but I did take Logic classes in the
Philosophy department.? But Adobe Flash
tricked has me into learning little bits of
code at a time by marrying ActionScript
with visual design. Then I started creating
Flash extensions to speed up my animation
work, and that scripting expanded to other
applications like InDesign—especially when
Flash dropped away around 2011!
I think my designer background helps me
empathize with designers and work closely
with them.
20
Feature: Scripting Stories
Gavriel “Harbs” Harbater
In-Tools.com / PrintUI.com
I’ve always been a “problem solver.” I got
into layout because my wife was a designer
and I started with helping her with her work.
There was too much tedium in some layout
tasks, and I found the InDesign scripting
forum, so I started asking there about
automating some things. Dave Saunders
pretty much wrote my first scripts for me. I
didn’t even know what a variable was, and
the only programming I had ever done was
in Basic when I was in school, with some
goto statements that printed out some
lines on the screen. I couldn’t keep asking
the scripters on the forum to do everything
for me, so I slowly learned the basics of
scripting, and I never looked back. Now I
learn about new programming languages in
my spare time for fun!
Kris Coppieters (left) and
Gavriel Harbater (right)
Kris Coppieters
Rorohiko.com / System-designers.com
I’ve always been fascinated by computers.
The only reason I got a mathematics degree
(at the University of Ghent, Belgium) was
because as a maths student at university,
I was allowed to use the university
mainframe. Of course, there were no
personal computers or video terminals in
that day and age—we had punch cards and
line printers.
By the late 1980s, after being firmly
entrenched in developing for Unix, I was
looking for something new to do. A friend of
mine had started a successful AppleCentre,
called “Logic,” which worked with banks,
newspapers, and so on. He suggested I
come work for him—which I thought was
crazy, as I did not consider the Apple Mac a
“real” computer. But suffice it to say that I’m
still using a Mac.
One of my colleagues at Logic was Dirk
Noppe, who had grown up a printer’s son,
and he knew everything about ink, paper,
21
imagesetters, and so on. He understood
the design and printing side, I understood
the software design and coding side, and
we made an unbeatable team, known for
being able to do the impossible. That was
the time of QuarkXPress 3.x—I wrote a lot
of XTensions, automated catalogues, and
fun stuff.
I loved working for Logic, but I really
wanted to go live in New Zealand. So I
burned my bridges, took a 50% reduction
in income, and moved to the place I really
wanted to be, taking my wife and three kids
with me.
In 1995—the very early days of the
internet!—we arrived in New Zealand. A
few weeks after arriving, I got an email
from Ron Crandall from Markzware. Ron
wrote the first version of FlightCheck,
the preflighting software. He had seen a
QuarkXTension I wrote called CollectHTML,
and told me I needed to come work for
Markzware in California. I told him I was
very sorry, but I just went through a lot of
trouble to get to New Zealand, and I was
not keen to move to the USA. So after a
bit of back and forth, I started working
remotely from New Zealand, and was their
chief-engineer-in-residence-yet-absent for
almost ten years.
We had something
even Adobe did
not have: a formal
description of their
file format.
At Markzware, I rewrote FlightCheck
from the ground up, which included
reverse engineering various native files.
File formats like PostScript or Illustrator
were easy, as those were documented. But
a lot of file formats were undocumented
or “secret”. We’d dissect native files in all
kinds of formats (Quark, Corel, Adobe
PageMaker), figured out how they worked,
and then used that info to do preflighting
on these files.
Then, around 2000, Ron and I figured out
how to read native InDesign files. That took
us eight months or so, but we pulled it off,
after which we had something even Adobe
did not have: a formal description of their
file format.
At some point in time, I decided I wanted
to be my own boss, and started Rorohiko.
(initially with Martinho Da Gloria, though
after a while we went our separate ways).
At Rorohiko, my main source of income
has been automating workflows around
InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator.
Initially, I wrote plug-ins. But in InDesign
CS there was this scripting language which
let me do 90% of what I could do with a
plug-in, with much less effort. And it was
surprisingly fast: for most automation tasks
that I encountered, there was no practical
difference between a scripted solution and
a plug-in solution.
Of course, Adobe’s ExtendScript had
some things missing, so I wrote a “bag of
tricks” plug-in to add whatever features
22
I needed at the time. That bag of tricks
became the APID ToolAssistant, which is still
very much alive today, and powers quite a
number well-known, popular, and useful
plug-ins/ExtendScripts.
could book 20-minute slots at the faculty
computer, so it took most of us a semester
to get a single program running.
Peter Kahrel
Typefi.com / kahrel.plus.com
I was neither a programmer nor a designer.
I’m a linguist by training, and drifted into
copyediting, typesetting, and indexing!
What brought me to scripting InDesign was
the tedium of typesetting linguistic texts.
In the early 1980s, the linguistics
department at Amsterdam University
(where I was a student) organized a Pascal
course. I knew nothing about computers,
hadn’t even been near any, and I couldn’t
have written a line of code if my life
depended on it. But it seemed like good fun.
That was my first encounter with computers.
We had to communicate with the computer
using punch cards, so writing, running, and
debugging was a lengthy process. You
Peter Kahrel
The first time I felt I needed a script was
when I started writing papers on the first
computer I owned. That was an Amstrad
Joyce, popular in the UK at the time.
Checking references in an academic paper is
very tedious, so armed with the knowledge
acquired during that Pascal course, and
full of bravura, I started writing a script in
Basic—the only programming language
available on the Joyce. Once I got to grips
with Basic (rather a shock compared with
Pascal), I got a script running that flagged
text references that weren’t cited in the
bibliography, and bibliography entries that
weren’t referenced in the text.
The PC arrived not much later, and I
discovered WordPerfect’s scripting language,
which was quite good. By then, I was already
drifting into copyediting and typesetting,
and wrote a lot of scripts to automate just
about everything that could be scripted.
When InDesign came round in 1999, I, like
so many people, waited for the first usable
version, which was 1.5 or 2. But the problem
was that I had to use Visual Basic, which I
wasn’t very fond of (or good at). Fortunately,
with Olav Kvern’s help in Adobe’s scripting
forum, I got my first InDesign script together.
(It was the script to compose accented
characters.) Then, when JavaScript came
around—with InDesign CS, I think—I was in
my element computationally and rewrote
23
many of the Turbo-Pascal scripts I had
done earlier.
The time I spent figuring out how to
script inDesign was well spent. Not only
did I think it great fun, but in the end I
could work quicker and enjoyed the work
better. In addition, I was able to do some
very big jobs that could really be done only
when the work could be automated. Can
you imagine creating 2,500 margin notes,
extracting marked text from the main text,
creating an anchor, and pasting the text?
The script took about an hour to write and a
few seconds to run.
something called “storage tube terminals”
by Tektronix, which were vector-based
(there were no raster displays in those days),
and I was pretty much the only person
who knew how to program them (because
other people thought they were just toys).
Anyway, I fell in love with computer graphics.
Chuck Weger
Elara.com
Like Kris, I started out life as a programmer
(we didn’t call them “developers” in those
days), using punched cards on an IBM
360/91—a big mainframe. My first job
was working for the Columbia University
Computer Center, where I was in charge of
computer graphics for the campus. We had
Chuck Weger
Fast forward many decades—past writing
device drivers for graphics cards, working
at NASA doing spacecraft ground control
systems, and later to Australia to write
graphical apps for biochemists at a hospital.
I got into consulting, and I had a client—a
large prepress shop that had about 80
offset strippers working in shifts, and a
system called a “Hell Cromacom,” which was
essentially like a $700,000 Macintosh. Pretty
primitive stuff, I thought. I wrote some
job-tracking database stuff for them. I had
decided to get a “real” job and was talking
with NASA about being a project manager
for the space station. But the prepress house
called me, offered me a job in Washington,
DC, and I took it.
So that was my introduction to graphic
arts. I bought a bunch of Macs, installed one
of the first Linotronic imagesetters in the DC
area, and started producing work that the
high-end Hell and Scitex systems were too
busy for. We had a lot of errors, so I came
up with something that I called “PostScript
Preflight.” Although I moved on and kind
of ignored preflight after that, it went on
to become kind of a Big Thing (you’re
welcome, Kris).
24
I was on various advisory boards at Aldus,
Adobe, and Quark, and, well, I’ve spoken
too long already. I did a lot of QuarkXPress
scripting, and then started automating
InDesign at the request of Ole Kvern, who
asked me to write some Windows scripts to
include on the distribution discs. One thing
led to another, and now here I am, working
in a company whose primary product is
based on automated InDesign workflows.
Actually, I can trim that down to two
sentences: I’ve always liked computers, and
have been working with them for longer
than most people have been alive. InDesign
came along, and it seemed like a fun thing
to be working with, so I started scripting it.
Olav Kvern Interview
Want to learn
more about the
scripters who make
InDesign users’ lives
easier? Read the
interview with Olav
Martin Kvern, who wrote most of the
scripts that ship with InDesign and
developed InDesign’s IDML format in
InDesign Magazine Issue 4.
The Key to
Working Smarter
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n
David Blatner started doing page layout on a Xerox Alto in
1977 and has been learning and sharing techniques with
designers and publishers ever since. He’s the co-founder
of InDesign Magazine and the president of the Creative
Publishing Network.
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25
By Chad Chelius
InStep: Excel to InDesign Via XML
Excel is a great application for capturing and managing
data. But for maximum flexibility, XML is often a more
robust choice for InDesign workflows.
Most InDesign users know that Excel
to achieve the desired result. But that still
spreadsheets can be placed into an
left me with a lot of manual formatting
InDesign document, and rendered as native
to do. I love nested styles in InDesign, but
InDesign tables. This is an excellent solution
they require very consistent content, with
when you want a table-based structure in
“triggers” that allow me to determine how
your final design. But what if you don’t want
content within a paragraph is formatted. If
to mimic a spreadsheet?
you don’t have consistent content from one
Recently I was creating a directory
paragraph to the next, nested styles just
of information based on data from a
don’t work.
spreadsheet, and the client wanted the
Now you might say that Data Merge
information to “flow” in a layout, instead
would be a logical choice, and it works well
of being listed as a table. In the past, I’ve
for some projects. But Data Merge alone
saved Excel files as .csv or tab-delimited files, doesn’t allow you to create flowing text, and
and then run some creative GREP searches
it requires each field to be a separate text
26
InStep: Excel to InDesign via XML
frame. Loic Aigon wrote a handy script called InlineMerge to overcome this limitation, but I
still wanted a bit more control.
XML gives me the ability to import content into InDesign in a story format, and provides
the control that I need to style content based on tags in the XML file, instead of specific
characters in the content.
The first challenge is getting clean XML out of Microsoft Excel. Excel has a format in the
Save As dialog box called XML Spreadsheet. However, when you open this XML file, you’ll
notice that it doesn’t contain clean code. To get clean XML code from your spreadsheet,
you’ll need to tag the content in Excel, using a specific process. Don’t worry; we’re going to
walk through each step to show how this works.
Disclaimer: This process relies on the Windows version of Excel. For whatever reason,
Microsoft omitted this (and other
<?xml version=”1.0” encoding=”UTF-8” standalone=”yes”?>
features) from the Mac version.
<Restaurants xmlns:xsi=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance”>
1. Create an XML
schema
You’ll need a sample XML schema file
that replicates the XML tags you’ll be
using to represent the data in the Excel
spreadsheet. In a plain text file, create
a few records to indicate the structure
and tags for the XML you will bring into
InDesign. Note that you need more than
a single record in order for this schema
to work. Make sure that the root element
is named the same as the Excel file that
<listing>
<restaurant>data1</restaurant>
<cuisine>data1</cuisine>
<city>data1</city>
<state>data1</state>
<description>data1</description>
<price>data1</price>
</listing>
<listing>
<city>data2</city>
</listing>
<listing>
<city>data3</city>
</listing>
</Restaurants>
27
you’ll be using. Aside from that, you can name the tags whatever you wish. I named the
elements the same as my column headers to make things easy, and then saved the file as
Schema.xml. See the figure on the previous page for the schema that I created. I should also
point out that this is less of an actual schema like you might see in other workflows, and
more of a prototype of what you want your resulting XML file to look like.
2. Load the schema in
Excel
In the Windows version of Excel, enable the Developer
tab in the Ribbon. Next, click the Source button in the
Developer tab to display the XML Source task pane.
Click the XML Maps button at the bottom of the XML
Source task pane to display the XML Maps dialog box.
Click the Add button, and select the Schema file that
you created in step 1. Excel may display a message
indicating that it will create a schema file based on
the XML file that you selected. You may also see a
confusing message pop up, but simply click OK to
dismiss it, and then OK again to close the dialog box.
With the source defined, you’ll see all of the tags that
you created in the XML file listed in the XML Source task pane.
28
3. Tag the Excel content
with XML tags
Next, you’ll tag the Excel content using the tags in the XML Source pane by either rightclicking on an element in the XML Source pane, choosing Map Element, and defining the
header cell; or simply dragging and dropping the element from the XML Source pane to the
column header. As you tag the content, you’ll see the entire column change color, indicating
that the XML tag has been applied. Repeat this for as many tags as you want to apply to the
content in Excel.
29
4. Export XML from
Microsoft Excel
Before exporting the XML, feel free to sort your information as desired. It’s not imperative
that the sorting be done at this step; it could have been done earlier in the process. Do
understand, though, that the way the Excel data is sorted—as well as the order of the
columns—will determine the order of the elements in the final XML file.
In the Developer tab, click the Export button, and provide a name and destination for the
XML file. Then click OK. The resulting XML file is a very clean, organized file with the content
tagged using the settings defined in Excel, ready for import into InDesign.
<?xml version=”1.0” encoding=”UTF-8” standalone=”yes”?>
<Restaurants xmlns:xsi=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance”>
<listing>
<restaurant>ABC Brewing Company</restaurant>
<cuisine>American</cuisine>
<city>Harrisburg</city>
<state>PA</state>
<description>Wide open space, nice variety of beer, and great burgers.</description>
<price>$$</price>
</listing>
<listing>
<restaurant>Barley Mow</restaurant>
<cuisine>Beer</cuisine>
<city>West Reading</city>
<state>PA</state>
<description>Friendly staff and a wide selection of brews. They don’t
serve food but you can bring your own!</description>
<price>$$</price>
</listing>
</Restaurants>
30
5. Load tags into the
InDesign document
6. Set the root element
Now that we have a clean XML file with the content that we want to use in our layout, it’s
time to set up the InDesign document in preparation for XML import. Start by opening
up the Tags panel in InDesign (Window > Utilities > Tags). Click on the panel menu, and
choose Load Tags. Select the XML file that you exported from Excel, and click OK. This loads
all of the tags contained in the XML file into the Tags panel.
Next, open the Structure pane (View > Structure > Show
Structure). You’ll see an item in there called Root.
If you’re not familiar with what the root element is, it’s
the element in the XML file that contains all other elements
(the outermost element). Every XML document needs a root
element; InDesign creates one automatically called Root.
31
To replace the generic Root element, click the
Root element in the Structure pane, and then click
on the name of the root element in the Tags pane
that represents the root element of your XML data.
7. Tag a text frame with
the root element
Drag the root element from the Structure pane on top of the text frame in your document
to tag it with that root element. You may not see much of a change at first, so make sure
to choose View > Structure > Show Tag Markers and View > Structure > Show Tagged
Frames. As long as you’re
not currently in preview
mode, the selected frame
should now be filled with
a color and contain a
colored stroke (border).
Don’t worry, this doesn’t
print in the final product.
32
8. Add placeholder
information
9. Tag the text
Next, enter placeholder information in the text frame for one of the records, and format it
the way you’d like it to look. It’s not mandatory that you create paragraph and character
styles for the text, but it helps if you want to tweak the formatting later on. The information
you enter doesn’t have to be real data—you can make it up, but it should represent the
elements of the content that you’ll be importing.
Now, tag the text within the frame. The way you tag the text should mimic how the XML
file is structured. In my example, I have a <listing> tag that contains all of the data for
each record, so I’ll begin by selecting all of my text, including the return at the end of the
paragraph, and then clicking the <listing> tag in the Tags panel. You’ll notice brackets
[ and ] appear around the tagged text. This is how InDesign lets you know how text in your
document is tagged.
Keep tagging the individual elements of the paragraph using the tags that represent
the data that you typed. Leave any characters untagged that you are using to separate
33
content in the paragraph, such as spaces, commas, returns, parentheses, and so forth. You
want them to appear in each record that you import, so it’s important that those items
remain untagged. The Story Editor in InDesign is really useful for tagging text and seeing
how text is tagged. In the Structure pane, you’ll now be able to see the content that you
tagged in the InDesign document. You may need to open the disclosure triangles to see all
of the tagged content. Tip: Hold Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) and click on the topmost
disclosure triangle to expand all of the nested structure.
10. Import the XML
Editor’s note: See issues 23 and 24
for a full rundown of XML workflows.
Click on an empty area within the Structure pane to make sure that none of the tagged
content is highlighted; otherwise InDesign will try to import the XML data into that element,
which is not what we want here.
Choose File > Import XML, and navigate to the XML file that you created in step 3. Select
the XML file, and make sure that the Show XML Import Options checkbox and the Merge
Content option are selected. Click Open.
The XML Import Options dialog box
displays with a plethora of options that may
seem daunting at first. You may be inclined
to just leave the settings at their defaults
and click OK, but if you do that, you may be
disappointed with the results. I won’t go over
each option in detail here, but the one option
that is critical for our content is the one
labeled Clone Repeating Text Elements.
34
If you recall back in step 9 when we were tagging the content, I said to not tag the
characters that you used to separate the information. I said that because the Clone
Repeating Text Elements option will replicate all of those characters in each imported
record, providing an incredibly powerful way to format your incoming XML data. The other
option that you’ll likely want to choose is the Do Not Import Contents Of Whitespace-Only
Elements. Although spaces are ignored in XML, that is not the case in InDesign. Enabling
this option stops the importing of whitespace that was used to indent the XML structure for
easy viewing in an XML or text editor.
Click OK, and you’ll see your content imported into the text frame, consistently formatted
the way that you defined it. If you see any formatting errors, simply undo and make an
adjustment to the formatting, and then re-import the XML file. Depending on your setup
and the appearance of the XML you’re importing, you may need to enable some of the other
import options.
In the figure at right, you can
see the content imported with
the tagged frame and tag markers
displayed, and then the content in
preview mode showing how the
final file will appear. There may be
some minor adjustments required,
such as line breaks, depending on
the length of each record, but for
the most part, the imported content
is ready to go.
35
11. Wrapping Up
It’s quite possible to get clean XML out of Microsoft Excel, and doing so gives you an
efficient way to import content into InDesign on a repeating basis. The idea behind this
project is that each month, new restaurant listings are provided that need to appear in a
publication with the same formatting. By using XML, you can create the next issue’s listings
by choosing File > Import XML, and you’re done. If you’d like to learn more about using
XML in InDesign, check out my Lynda.com course on Creating an InDesign Booklet Using
XML, where I walk you through the process step-by-step and go over many of the options
in detail.
n
Chad Chelius is an Adobe Certified Instructor, author, and
consultant in the Philly area and is the Managing Editor of
incopysecrets.com. He has authored several titles for lynda.
com including his most recent titles, Creating Accessible PDFs
with Acrobat DC, Advanced Accessible PDFs, and Creating an
InDesign Booklet Using XML. You can follow him on twitter
@chadchelius and you can reach him at chad@
cheliusgraphicservices.com.
36
GREP of the Month
[^ ] and \D
Negating characters in a GREP search
that’s not a space. For example, this is especially useful when searching for words
that aren’t capitalized, but should be.
usual character range expression (such as
[^0-6]) to exclude all numbers from 0 to 6.
Here’s a more complex example. The expression [^42]\d{5} will find a six-digit number.
The first character can be anything as long
as it isn’t 4 or 2, followed by any five regular
digits. Below, you can see the found entries
in cyan.
Negating specific characters You can also
negate certain characters in your search
by using the [^] pattern. To use it, type
all the characters you want to be excluded
after the ^ symbol without spaces. Don’t
worry, InDesign will treat all characters
as individual entries and not as one combined search. For example, you can use the
expression [^abc] to find any character
except for a, b, and c. If you need to negate a range of characters, you can use the
Be sure to experiment with this
technique; it’s too powerful not to use!
—Bart Van de Wiele
Learn how to exclude a single character (or a range of them)
with these handy expressions.
GREP Level: Easy
Learning how to use the absence or negation of a certain character as a search criterion will give you a powerful way of finding
what you want. And you can use two different expressions for this for maximum
flexibility.
Negating character classes The first expression is really simple to use. Capitalize
the common character classes like \d (any
digit), \u (uppercase), or \s (space) to invert
their effect. Thus, \D will find everything
that’s not a digit, and \S will find anything
37
By Anne-Marie Concepción
www.bradytypesetting.com
Artistry and Code
Laura Brady’s ebooks are beautiful inside and out
Laura won the annual Digital Book Award for Ebook—
Fixed Format/Enhanced: Children for this children’s book
at the F&W Digital Book World Conference last year. She
customized the Kindle’s pop-up text (the green-background
caption) to more closely match the book’s aesthetic.
Is it hard to make an ebook from InDesign?
Not really—until you’re handed a layout
that uses runs of spaces and tabs instead of
indents, or has dozens of highly-formatted
tables, or full-bleed images that must
remain full-bleed (even though there’s no
such thing in a reflowable ebook), or handdrawn lettering, or any number of other
non-standard elements that the client is
expecting to see intact in an ebook…
Laura Brady takes these challenges
in stride, for the most part, as a result of
years of experience that few of her peers
can match. Founder of Toronto-based
Brady Type, Laura started designing and
developing ebooks back in 2009, a year
before the debut of the Apple iPad, the
iBooks app, and the iBookstore. She caught
the big wave in a publishing sea change and
has been riding it ever since.
What’s more important here, though,
is that Laura came to ebook conversion
and design only after fifteen years of hard
work laying out and typesetting trade print
books. That background instilled in her the
expectation of getting the same quality,
readability, and elegance in the ebooks her
company produces for their clients.
Ebook Challenges
with InDesign
Let’s imagine a scenario in which Laura is
handed a beautifully-designed InDesign
layout of a simple, text-heavy book with
38
a few images. And let’s go further, and
assume that the client who created that
file did so properly, applying paragraph,
character, and object styles consistently
throughout, using OpenType fonts, highres images, even anchoring the images in
the text flow so they’d appear in the correct
location when the book was exported to
EPUB (Reflowable) from the File > Export
dialog box.
Does that mean all she has to do is
export the thing and send an invoice? Many
designers would—maybe after doing some
basic tweaks and testing—but not Laura.
Before she exports, for example, she
always combs through the layout and sets
accessibility attributes in Object > Object
Export Options for stories and images, such
as semantic tags and ALT text. This makes
the ebook ready to work with assistive
devices like screen readers. Laura says, “I
think InDesign’s accessibility features
could be dramatically improved, though. It
needs default Section and Aside tags, for
example. Not just for accessibility, but also
for rendering [in an eReader].”
Even after that and other preparatory
tasks are done, she’s seldom satisfied with
the resulting EPUB export. Laura will always
open the EPUB in an HTML editor to clean
up the code (the HTML and CSS markup)
that InDesign creates.
“InDesign adds a lot of unnecessary code,
which makes it difficult to edit. But I can
clean up much of that with a few RegEx
(GREP Find/Change) in a text editor,” she
says. Laura likes to use her own CSS file
whenever possible, linking the HTML to it in
the EPUB Export Options dialog box. “The
CSS that ID gives you doesn’t cascade at all.
And the style sheet that gets used so often,
paragraph body, is put at the bottom of the
CSS file. It should be at the top!”
Nevertheless, InDesign is the central
hub for Brady Type’s ebook work, even
if a manuscript comes in as a Word file. “I
love that landmarks [a usability feature in
modern EPUBs] is built in. I love that you
can group boxes, manipulate them, and
have them rasterize on export,” she says.
Laura pointed out, “Most advanced EPUB
developers just use HTML, but that file is
hard to update for most people. When the
ID file is really well constructed, that’s your
archive. It’s agile and ready to update for the
next edition or version.”
Leading the Way for Her
EPUB Colleagues
In recent years, Laura has taken on
leadership and mentoring roles in the
EPUB community. She speaks at industry
conferences like our own PePcon and
BookNet Canada’s ebookcraft (which she
organizes as well). She also pens blog
posts about ebooks on publishing portals,
presents workshops, and helps run the
vibrant #eprdctn community on Twitter.
Through it all, she’s always learning, and
as her home page says, she’s “committed to
the art of type—in print or digital format.”
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Above and right: Laura created the ebook version of noted
fine art photographer Snygg Mas’s Just Another Day. This
book is a series of “Flows” where the photographer stands
in one place and takes a series of shots of passersby over
the span of hours. It’s a fixed-layout ebook with numerous
two-page spreads to showcase the photography.
Below: Spread from a cookbook Laura laid out as a
reflowable ebook, so it’s readable on any size screen.
Laura is adept at creating children’s books as fixed-layout
EPUBs for the iPad, Kobo, and Kindle platforms. Above is
a spread for Little Bear’s Day, which includes read-aloud
interactivity (note the highlighted word). The book is
designed to help children learn the Cree language, which
appears in syllabic and phonetic forms beneath the
English text. Below is a spread from the illustrated ebook
Windblown, also showing a word changing color as it’s
being read aloud. Creating read-aloud functionality is all
done manually in the HTML files; InDesign doesn’t offer it.
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Even though she’s an expert at the fixed-layout format, Laura says, “I spend a great deal of time trying to convince
people who want fixed-layout that it might not be the best format for their content.” The client/author for this
project was adamant that it maintain the print design in the ebook, so Laura created it in iBooks Author (left, top
and bottom). Later, the client requested a reflowable EPUB version of the same (above), and that’s the one his Colour
Theory students turn to most often.
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One of the challenges when creating reflowable ebooks
is making reflowable tables. When Laura works on the
Akamai Connectivity Reports, she knows she’ll have to
ensure that the numerous tables contained in the ebook
will not only reflect the formatting of the printed version,
but will be readable on a wide range of screen sizes.
In other words, she ensures that the tables are responsive
and reflow to fit without sacrificing design or readability.
On the next page, you can see what one of the tables looks
like in the InDesign file, and how Laura’s HTML cleanup
work helped make this happen.
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Left: One of the tables in the INDD file for the publication Akamai
Connectivity Reports. Note that all the text, cells, and the table
itself have been formatted with styles. After exporting the INDD
file to EPUB, Laura opened the component files in a text editor.
Lower left: The original HTML output from InDesign, which Laura
terms “overburdened.” Below: The same table after she stripped
the markup to the essentials, resulting in the clean, responsive
tables show on the previous page.
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Spreads from the textbook Calm, Alert, and
Learning, published by Pearson Canada.
Laura has a special affinity for replicating complex print layouts as reflowable
EPUBs. Reflowable ebooks, as compared to fixed-layout ones, have a much wider
distribution channel (because so many eReaders can access them) and can be
made accessible.
Here you see an example of a complex textbook with sidebars, sections, lists,
and deep navigation in the TOC. These screen captures are from Adobe Digital
Editions, and you know if it looks good in ADE, it’ll look good anywhere.
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Setting poetry in reflowable ebooks
is especially challenging, as the line
indents and breaks carry almost as
much meaning as the words. The
only way to do it right is to create
individual paragraph styles for
practically every line so they convert
to matching CSS classes (right).
Above left is how the InDesign file
was originally formatted with space
and tab runs, to the right of that is
how it looked after Laura cleaned
it up. And the final result, as seen in
iBooks at far right, shows why all that
work was worth it.
n
Anne-Marie Concepcion (@amarie), co-publisher of InDesign Magazine,
is a Chicago-based publication designer, workflow consultant, and
Adobe Certified Instructor in InDesign. She is the author of numerous
Lynda.com courses in creating reflowable and fixed-layout EPUBs
from InDesign. Her studio, Seneca Design & Training, provides ebook
conversion and training services to clients worldwide.
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Best of the Blog
A collection of the most important and informative articles from InDesignSecrets.
If you want to add comments or ask questions, just click the title of the article to
view the original post in your web browser.
Three More Great Ways to Add
Colors to InDesign Documents
Erica Gamet | June 23, 2016
theme’s components, choose Save. Just as with the Capture app,
you can assign the theme a name, send it to a CC Library, add tags,
and choose Publish This Theme To Explore (make it public).
Editor’s note: This post is a follow-up to Erica’s earlier article on how to
add colors to InDesign documents using Adobe Capture.
How to Add Colors to InDesign Documents With Adobe Color
Adobe Color—which is what the late, great Kuler eventually
morphed into—is the online home of all your color themes. If
you created a theme in Adobe Capture, you can access it from
the Colors site. Not only can you access themes, but you can also
manipulate them, or create new ones as needed. Select the Create
tab to create a color theme from scratch, choosing from the color
rules at the left side. Drag the selection around the color wheel,
and individually adjust each color’s mode and value sliders. You
can also click the camera icon in the upper right if you want to use
a source image to create the theme. When you’ve perfected your
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The second option, if you don’t want to create a theme from
scratch, is Explore. Selecting this tab lets you browse public themes.
You can view them in random order or by popularity. The great
thing is, once you find a theme you like, you can choose to edit a
copy of it. Rolling over a theme gives you that option, as well as
the choice to appreciate, share, and save. When you save a public
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theme, again, you’ll have to choose which Creative Cloud library to
save it to.
Using InDesign’s Color Theme Tool
Introduced in InDesign CC 2014, the Color Theme tool gives you
the opportunity to capture color directly from elements in your
InDesign document. First, make sure you have the tool configured
to your liking by double-clicking the tool’s icon (which occupies the
same square as the Eyedropper in the Tools panel). Options include
whether or not to ignore opacity and effects when sampling color,
and choosing how to handle the color mode. By default, the colors
are added—and converted, if necessary—in the color mode that
matches the intent set up when the document was created.
The last main tab on the Color page is My Themes. This is where
themes you’ve created live. View your theme collection all together
or by individual library. Clicking on the info icon for any theme
brings up not only information on that theme, but the chance to
make it public, if it isn’t already. Use Edit Copy to make changes at
any time, including the theme’s name, by clicking the blue pencil
icon next to the name.
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Once you’ve set the options, sampling colors is easy. Select the
tool, and either drag across items on the page or click on an image.
Clicking an image will sample up to five colors from the image, but
you can focus the selection by dragging across only a portion of
the image. When you’ve got a palette you like, you’ll want to save
it somewhere. You can click the Add to Swatches icon (it looks like
a palette with a plus sign) to add the entire theme as a color group.
If you want just a single color to be added, Option/Alt-click the
same icon. You can also choose variations of the theme, such as
Bright, Dark, or Muted before saving. If you want to have the theme
available outside of InDesign—or in other InDesign documents—
click the Add to Library icon (the cloud with the arrow). Note that
this saves the theme to your currently selected CC Library, so make
sure to select your library first in the CC Libraries panel.
can rename the theme, and move or copy a theme to another
library. I prefer to manage my color themes this way, so that I get
an overview of my assets outside of the confines of any app, but
you can organize library assets from the CC Libraries panel within
InDesign as well. Once everything is organized neatly in libraries, it’s
time to head back to InDesign to use these colors.
Working With Colors in Creative Cloud Libraries
No matter where you’ve created your colors, there’s a common
thread running through each method: Creative Cloud Libraries. Not
only is the Creative Cloud the place to store all of your assets, color
and otherwise, but it’s the easiest way to be assured you’re using
the same defined colors throughout your apps. You can view colors
stored in libraries from within InDesign, or you can head over to
assets.adobe.com and click on libraries. Clicking on a specific library
will display all of its assets, including color themes. From here, you
Bringing It All Together
In InDesign, it’s easy to access the colors you’ve captured and
saved. If you created them with InDesign’s Color Theme tool and
saved them to a document’s swatches, you can either open that
document, or load swatches from that document. Otherwise, you
will probably select them from a Creative Cloud library. With the CC
Libraries panel open in InDesign (Window > CC Libraries), choose
the library where your desired color theme lives. Once you’ve
scrolled to the desired theme, right-click or Control-click on the
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theme to bring up the contextual menu. Choosing Add Theme to
Swatches puts the entire theme into the Swatches panel as a color
group, while choosing Add to Swatches will add only the exact
swatch your cursor is hitting, so point and click carefully.
There is yet another way to access colors stored in CC Libraries,
and that’s by using the Color Themes panel (Window > Color >
Adobe Color Themes). This panel is like a mini portal to the Adobe
Color web page, in that you can create new color themes, explore
others’ themes, and access your existing themes. I’ve had issues
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with this panel since it was introduced, namely that the scroll bars
are nonexistent, so I can only view the first eight or so themes in
each library (which I’m sure is a bug and not a feature). If you are
able to view the theme you want, either click once on a specific
color to add it to your swatches, or use the Action menu below
each theme to add the entire theme.
Color Yourself Informed
There are many ways to get that perfect color—arranged in
harmonious themes—into InDesign. The uniting power of
Creative Cloud Libraries makes the transition between apps
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fairly foolproof. The handoff—from capturing colors to editing
them to putting them to work in InDesign—is precisely the kind
of seamless operation that Adobe’s Creative Cloud was created
for. And anything that makes my life easier is something I think is
worth embracing.
Six Tips to Speed Up InDesign
Erica Gamet | June 29, 2016
Preferences > Display Performance) renders the images at a
screen-friendly resolution. This has been InDesign’s default setting
for viewing images onscreen for ages. However, with the latest
release (or maybe even earlier and I just didn’t notice it), the default
seems to be High Quality. Even with the default set to high, you can
right-click or Control-click on a document page to set the display
performance for the current document, or right-/Control-click on
an image to change the setting for just that image.
Sometimes things just don’t run as smoothly or as quickly as we’d
like. Even our ever-faithful companion, InDesign, is not free from
frustrating slowdowns and inexplicable quirks. Some people
are quick to jump on the “trash your preferences” bandwagon,
but I almost never have to resort to that. If you’ve done some
troubleshooting and are quite certain it’s not a particular file—or
an asset within that file—causing you grief, there are a few things
you can try to speed up InDesign. If you know your computer is
normally up to handling your intense workflow, then maybe one—
or three—of the following issues and settings within InDesign is
what’s bringing it to its knees.
Set InDesign’s Display Performance to Typical
Viewing images at high resolution forces InDesign to constantly
redraw elements as you move around the document, eating up
processor oomph. Setting the default to Typical (InDesign/Edit >
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Turn off Live Drawing
Turn off InDesign’s Live Screen Drawing—or at least set it to
Delayed—in the Interface pane of your Preferences to speed things
up a notch. The delayed option means that when you click on an
item, such as an image, and then wait a split second to move or
transform it, you’ll get a live preview of the transformation as you
perform it. If this option is set to immediate, InDesign has to display
every step of the process for every transformation. That’s a lot
of processing.
Minimize Live Preflight
Live Preflight works in the background to make sure your
document falls within the parameters you’ve set for the specific
output. If you’re not working, it probably is. You can limit which
pages it’s checking by opening the Preflight panel. To do that,
either click the Preflight menu to the right of the red or green dot at
the bottom of the document frame, or choose Window > Output >
Preflight. At the bottom of the panel, select the radio button to
the right of All, and choose a page (or alternate layout). Now the
preflighting is being conducted only on that particular page. Better
yet, turn it off altogether by deselecting the On checkbox until
you’re ready to preflight.
Turn Off Page Thumbnails
If you have a lot of pages in your document, and those pages have
a lot of items on them, your Pages panel thumbnails are working
really hard to keep up with you. One place I notice a lag in redraw is
those pesky little page thumbnails. Most of the time, the page icons
are so small that the thumbnails—even if they ARE redrawing—
aren’t very helpful. Go to the Pages panel menu, choose Panel
Options, and then deselect the Show Thumbnails option for both
Pages and Masters.
Turn Off Hyperlink Verification
A tip I learned at PePcon 2016 from a newly-informed Anne-Marie
Concepción was that InDesign is very fastidious about checking
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hyperlinks. One might even say it’s “hyper” about it (if one were into
such easily uttered puns). InDesign constantly checks the validity
of URLs in hyperlinks, which can really slow down a file containing
a lot of hyperlinks. Turn off the obsessive checking by deselecting
“Auto Update URL Status” in the Hyperlinks panel menu.
turn the option off completely. At the very least, you could limit the
preview pages to just the first one or two pages in the document, or
reduce the dimensions of the preview itself.
Lining Up Baselines Across
Frames without Baseline Grid
David Blatner | July 11, 2016
You have text in two frames, one positioned above the other, and
you want to ensure the space from one text baseline to the next is
consistent. How do you place the text frames properly?
Turn Off Save Preview Images
InDesign gives you the option of including a preview image when
saving your documents, which happens to be the default behavior.
This is another item that constantly updates as you work. To make
changes to this option, head to Preferences, and go to the File
Handling pane. You can deselect Always Save Preview Images to
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Well, you may know that InDesign has a Baseline Grid feature,
and if you locked the baselines to that underlying grid, it would
be pretty easy. But there are times you may not want to have
the constraints of the baseline grid. (Honestly, I hardly ever use a
baseline grid, as I generally find it frustrates me more than it helps.
But I know many people who love the grid thing.)
So here’s the trick:
First, select the second frame (or both of them), choose Object >
Text Frame Options, click the Baseline Options tab, and set the First
Baseline Offset pop-up menu to Leading:
Then drag the bottom frame up until it snaps against the bottom
of the top frame. You can use Smart Guides to ensure that it is in the
correct position:
Next, double-click the bottom edge handle of the top frame so
that it snugs up against the last baseline of the text frame. (That’s
basically the same as choosing Object > Fitting > Fit Frame to
Content.)
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When you let go, the two frames will be next to each other, and
because the First Baseline Offset is set to Leading, it will be in
exactly the right place:
Of course, this relies on the leading (the space from one baseline
to the next) being consistent; so you want to ensure that you have
the same leading throughout the paragraph.
Here’s another article on why that First Baseline Offset is so
important to pay attention to.
InDesign Basics: Working With Layers
Chad Chelius | July 13, 2016
InDesign Basics is a series of articles for new InDesign users,
highlighting basic information and techniques. We all had to start
somewhere, so why not start right here!
One of the InDesign features that provides users with the level
of design control that they need to create visually rich layouts is
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layering. Often when the topic of layers is brought up to InDesign
users, they’ll say that they don’t use layers. Well, they’re lying! Not
intentionally of course, but whether they realize it or not, they’re
always working with at least one layer in every InDesign document
that they create.
Open up the Layers panel in any InDesign document and you’ll
see at the very least one layer, which is most likely called Layer 1.
This layer is created by default in every InDesign document.
Many InDesign users understand layering in InDesign to the
extent that they can use the Object > Arrange > Bring to Front
command, which moves an object in front of everything else on
that layer, and the Object > Arrange > Send to Back command,
which moves an object behind everything else on that layer.
You may also have used the Bring Forward and Send Backward
commands in that same Arrange submenu, to move selected
objects in front of or behind the next closest object on that layer.
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The term I stress here is on that layer. You’ll notice that those four
commands to adjust the stacking order of objects occur only within
a layer, and will never traverse to other layers. The other thing
you’ll notice when you open the Layers panel is that if you click the
disclosure triangle to the left of a layer name, it will reveal every
single object on the page or spread that is contained on that layer.
Why Use Layers in InDesign?
Layers provide an enhanced level of control over the objects in a
document by allowing you to subdivide a number of objects into
logical or functional pieces. Simply put, the more complex a layout
is, the more difficult and time-consuming it is to work with. This
complexity can be reduced when you organize objects onto layers,
because you can hide or lock objects to avoid accidentally selecting
or moving them while working in a document.
There’s no right or wrong way to use layers, nor is there any
limitation to how you can take advantage of them. One common
configuration is to put all of the graphics on a layer and all of
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the text on a different layer. I’ve created projects that had two
versions of text for different customers but with common graphics.
In a case such as this, I had two different text layers and one
common graphics layer. This allowed me to hide different layers
to quickly produce a new version of my design. Another powerful
configuration is to create a Master Items layer and put all of the
objects on a master page on a separate layer above all other layers
in a document. This ensures that the master page items always
appear on top of objects on each page of a document.
How To Take Advantage of Layers
To create a new layer, click the Create New Layer button located at
the bottom of the Layers panel. This adds a new layer to the Layers
panel, named Layer 2 by default. You can double-click on a layer
to display the Layer Options dialog box where you can give the
layer a more appropriate name, hide or show the layer, lock the
layer, and determine whether the layer will print, as well as several
other options. You can even change the color of the layer, meaning
the color of the bounding box of selected artwork. To save time,
you can hold down the Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) key when
clicking the Create New Layer button to automatically display the
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Layer Options dialog box so you can give each layer an appropriate
name straight away.
When you click on a layer to make it the active layer (indicated
by a pen icon to the right of the layer name), anything you place,
draw, or create will go on the active layer. That doesn’t mean
that you can’t move objects from one layer to another. Doing so
is actually quite easy. When you select an object in an InDesign
document and open the Layers panel, you’ll notice a small square
icon to the far right of the layer name. This icon indicates that the
selected object(s) are located on that layer.
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If you drag that square to another layer in the Layers panel, you’ll
move the selected object(s) to that layer, while keeping the artwork
at the same page location. Add the Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows)
key while you drag, and you’ll make a copy of the selected object(s)
to that layer. You can also click on that square icon on any layer to
select that object in your document, providing an easy way to see,
via the Layers panel, where an item is located in your document.
Are you seeing how powerful Layers are yet?
Visual Stacking Order
Just as objects within a layer have a stacking order, so too do the
layers themselves. Anything that’s on a layer located at the top of
the Layers panel will appear above everything else that is on any
layer below it. To rearrange the stacking order of the layers, simply
drag one layer above, below, or in between other layers to change
how layer content is displayed.
Object stacking order within a layer also becomes easier to
visualize and manipulate when you open the disclosure triangle
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for a layer. You can see how objects are stacked in relation to one
another because every object on that layer is represented from the
top down. When trying to fine-tune stacking order, you can simply
drag objects up or down within a layer to precisely adjust the
stacking order of objects in your design.
Naming Objects in the Layers Panel
You’ve already seen how you can provide appropriate names to the
top-level layers in your document. Although objects that you draw,
place, or create in InDesign are automatically named by default
with appropriate names like polygon, rectangle, and text frame,
you can easily rename the individual objects within a layer to
identify them when trying to manipulate objects. Select the object,
and then click its name in the panel to change it.
Wrapping Up
Although it’s possible to work in InDesign without ever opening the
Layers panel, hopefully you are able to see the power and flexibility
that using layers in InDesign has to offer. Give them a try, and I
think you’ll agree that they are worth taking advantage of.
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GPU Support and Animated
Zoom Arrives (for the Mac)
Steve Werner | July 18, 2016
Following the lead of Photoshop CC and Illustrator CC, the InDesign
CC 2015.4 update finally added GPU support— beginning with
Macintosh computers. We covered an overview of 2015.4 features
here, but we’ll give more details and shortcuts in this posting.
As Retina and HiDPI monitors are becoming the standard,
applications have to “push” more pixels around. Relying only on the
CPU can slow down screen rendering.
GPU Support for Macintosh
Here are the requirements for Macintoshes to use their GPU in
InDesign CC 2015.4:
»» The computer must have at least 1 Gb of dedicated VRAM (2 Gb
recommended) and it must support OpenGL version 4.0 and
greater; AND
»» The computer must have a native Retina display (e.g., MacBook
Pro, iMac 4K, iMac 5K, etc.). For computers like a Mac Pro or Mac
Mini, they have to be connected to a HiDPI (Retina) monitor.
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If your computer meets these requirements, you’ll see a choice
like this in a new GPU Performance preference:
By default, GPU acceleration will be turned on for all documents.
This will speed your computer operation during scrolling, zooming,
panning, moving objects between pages, and so on.
You have the option to turn off GPU acceleration in GPU
preferences. You can also toggle it on and off for an individual
document by choosing View > GPU Preview or Preview on CPU.
The shortcut to toggle is Shift+E. You can have both GPU and CPU
windows open at the same time, as shown below:
GPU vs CPU Windows
GPU Performance Preference
Otherwise, you’ll see the message “Compatible GPU and monitor
not detected.”
A new “rocket” icon will appear in the Application Bar (a similar
icon appears in Illustrator CC 2015), and clicking it will take you to
the GPU Preferences:
When you’re doing complex layouts with transparency,
overprinting, and so on, check your display when using the GPU.
Since this is the first version of this display software, there could be
unexpected bugs or glitches. If that’s the case, just switch back to
the CPU.
Display Performance in the View menu is independent of GPU or
CPU settings. If your system has a compatible GPU card, the Display
Performance is set by default to High Quality. For other systems, it’s
still Typical Quality.
Rocket icon
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Animated Zoom
Illustrator CC and Photoshop CC have had another style of
zooming, called Animated Zoom, powered by a GPU that the
application recognizes.
InDesign CC 2015.4 also adds this new feature, and turns it on
by default with a computer that meets the requirements listed
above. If you switch to CPU mode (Shift+E) or Overprint Preview
mode, Animated Zoom doesn’t work, and you’ll see only the
Marquee Zoom behavior you’re used to. Marquee zooming is still
the default if you don’t have hardware that meets the specifications
for GPU Performance.
There are two ways to invoke Animated Zoom:
»» With the Zoom tool selected, clicking and holding your mouse
zooms in continuously until you reach the maximum zoom level
(4000%). This allows you to zoom in at the exact center of your
cursor. Press the Option/Alt key and press to zoom out.
»» Click the Zoom tool, and scrub right to zoom in. Click and scrub
left to zoom out. (Photoshop CC calls this Scrubby Zoom.)
InDesign, unlike Photoshop and Illustrator, lets you disable this
behavior with a modifier key. Pressing the Shift key returns you to
the previous default, the Marquee Zoom.
And if you don’t want Animated Zoom at all, you can turn it off in
GPU Performance preferences.
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If you have a qualifying computer, try out this new behavior and
let us know what you think.
Mystery of the Absent Artwork
Contest and Winner!
Mike Rankin | July 21, 2016
It’s time to reveal the solution—and the winner—for this month’s
InDesignSecrets contest, the Mystery of the Absent Artwork!
Here’s the scenario:
You’ve prepared a full-color ad that will be printed in a magazine.
In your InDesign file, there are just two items: a background photo
saved as a JPG and a vector logo saved as a PDF.
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Both are embedded in the InDesign file.
They send a proof back to you, and to your dismay the vector
logo is missing. This proof is accurate, and if the ad is printed as is,
the logo will not appear.
You output a PDF. At a glance, it looks good, so you send it to the
magazine’s production department.
Why does the logo disappear in the PDF?
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The answer is that the logo was filled with white and set
to overprint.
When an object is set to overprint, it will not knock out any
underlying items. And since the logo was filled with white, it won’t
be using any of the inks in the print job. That’s why it disappeared
in the proof, and why it won’t appear in the printed output unless it
is fixed by changing the overprint setting.
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In this case, the logo was a PDF embedded in the InDesign file.
So to remove the overprint, you would first unembed the logo in
the Links panel.
Then open it in Illustrator, and use the Attributes panel to remove
the overprint.
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Note that InDesign has its own Attributes panel (Window >
Output > Attributes) that you’d use to set or remove overprinting
of native objects.
And the winner of this contest is…Shane Smith
Shane wins license for FlexDoc, a cool plug-in for setting up
documents with folds and die-cuts. You can use it to make anything
from a simple three-panel brochure to complex packaging.
Thanks to everyone who entered, and be on the lookout for another
contest with a new great prize next month!
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The InDex:
InDex Your Key to Our Content
Can’t find that article you saw in an earlier issue?
Wondering whether we covered that obscure plug-in?
Never fear, the InDex is here.
The first issue of InDesign Magazine was
published in July 2004. Since then, we’ve
cranked out thousands of pages on hundreds of related topics.
While it’s possible to use Acrobat to
simultaneously search all past issues of the
magazine for one word or phrase, many
readers have clamored for a formal index at
the back of each issue.
However, with 88 issues to account for,
that’s not feasible. Instead, the InDex will
live as a PDF you can download for free.
If you come across a topic you want to
know more about, but it’s in an issue you
don’t have, you’re not out of luck. We sell
back issues at indesignsecrets.com.
If the topic you’re looking for isn’t in the
InDex, you have one more way to search:
that PDF trick we mentioned. To make it
work, all of your magazine issue PDFs must
be in one folder.
Open any issue in Acrobat, and then
press Shift+Command+F (Shift+Ctrl+F
on Windows). In the Search window that
appears, be sure that you click the radio
button that says “All PDF Documents in,”
and in the dropdown menu below that,
choose the folder in which you placed your
magazine issues. You’re on your way to
finding anything in any PDF!
Click here to download the InDex.
63
While this PDF is just for you,
you can tell your friends about
this great discount: $10 off
a 1-year membership
Use coupon code:
friend at indesignsecrets.com/issues
Coming Soon!
64

InDesign Magazine 88: The InDesign Script-o

Transcription

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