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*** DesignGeek ***
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Tips and techniques for the digital designer
In this issue:
-- Find/Change in InDesign Style Sheets
-- Illustrator's "Flatten This Transparency Now"
-- Better InCopy Galley/Story View Font
Issue 35, 2/22/05
Written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion
... for her clients, colleagues, random contacts and interested subscribers
© 2005 Seneca Design & Training, Inc.
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Find/Change in InDesign Style Sheets
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InDesign's Find Font and/or Find/Change (set to Search: Document) commands are the fastest way to change text formatting throughout a document. Both automatically search and replace in Master pages as well as document pages, and both can find text formatted with a missing font and change its typeface to one available.
Tiplet: Bet you didn't know that Find/Change's Find Format Settings, revealed by clicking More Options in Edit -> Find/Change, could find missing fonts, did you? If missing fonts are called for in the document, their names appear in brackets at the very end of the dropdown menu of typefaces in the Basic Character Formats panel. If you don't see yours, try choosing any font from this menu, click in another field, then go back to the dropdown menu and look at the bottom ones again. It's like a mini-Refresh ... your missing fonts should now appear.
Find Font and Find/Change Format are also great for changing all usage of a Type 1 or TrueType typeface to an Open Type version. A lot of clients moving to InDesign/InCopy workflows are doing this to their publication templates to make cross-platform work easier. (The same Open Type font can be used as is on both Mac OS X and Windows 2000/XP.) And many other places are moving to Open Type to take advantage of OT-only features:
http://www.senecadesign.com/designgeek/opentype.html
Here comes the BUT ... Neither Find Font nor Find/Change Format can access style sheet settings in InDesign CS. So while the text that's already in your document might be completely updated, there's a good chance some of your Paragraph and Character style sheets still call for the unwanted typeface(s). Blech!
Running that initial Find Font or Find/Change only does half the job. If you click inside some text that you've run the Find/Change on, you'll probably see a plus symbol appear after the text's linked style sheet in the Styles palette. The plus symbol here indicates local formatting "on top of" style sheet formatting, because InDesign is reading the new typeface as local formatting applied to every single character.
Not only that, but as soon as you enter any new text and apply the original style sheet, bang, you're back to where you started: an unwanted typeface in the doc.
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Redefine Style to the Rescue
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If you think you'll have to open each of your 200 style sheets to manually check for and change typeface settings, don't worry. You're forgetting about that friendly little command in both the Character Styles and Paragraph Styles palettes: Redefine Style.
Redefine Style is the plus symbol-eradicator. The Plusinator, baby. You use it to tell InDesign, "See this local formatting right 'chere by my text cursor? Change the specs of the original style sheet to match it." InDesign looks at the modified text formatting, updates the original style sheet to conform, and voila, the plus symbol disappears. What was local formatting is now "native," base style sheet specs.
Bonus: All other text in the document formatted with that style sheet updates to the new specs in unison, but retains any *other* sort of local formatting (e.g., All Caps) it might have had.
So ... armed with this knowledge, you can combine Find/Change or Find Font with Redefine Style to do document-wide AND style sheet-wide typeface changes at the same time.
The key is to make your font changes one at a time. You want InDesign to *search* the entire document, but for this technique, you want it to *replace* instances one by one. That way you can decide if you need to redefine a style sheet while you're at it. So, in either Find Font or Find/Change, after selecting the fonts you want it to find and replace, click the Find First button and then stop and look at what it found.
Did just a few characters get selected (found)? It's either "true" local formatting (not tied to a style sheet -- in that case, click Change and then Find Next) or the font is part of a Character Style applied to the selection (follow the same general instructions for redefining a paragraph style, which follow.)
Did an entire paragraph (or more) of text become selected? Bingo, you've likely tracked down a paragraph style sheet that needs redefining. Leave the changed text selected and look at your Paragraph Styles palette. If you see a single style sheet selected with a plus symbol after it, choose Redefine Style from the palette.
[If you're not sure it's the font change that caused the local formatting, before you choose Redefine Style, undo your font change (Edit -> Undo) and click in the paragraph. No plus sign? Go ahead and Redo the font change, then Redefine Style. There was a plus sign even before you changed the font? Redo the font change but don't Redefine. This is one style sheet you'll have to open up and check manually for typeface specs.]
I know it sounds a little complicated, but it really isn't. You're just updating style sheets as you're replacing fonts. And since redefining a style sheet updates all text in the document linked to that style, often you only have to do it once -- it's like a Change All, and the missing font name disappears from your choices in Find Font or can't be found with the next Find/Change.
If the missing font is still listed after a Redefine, it's probably used in another style sheet. Click the Find Next button and repeat the same check-for-plus-symbol/redefine-if-necessary steps.
Run through this routine for every missing font. When you're done, you have a document that's good to go, inside and out: Master pages, document pages, and style sheets.
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Illustrator's "Flatten This Transparency Now" Command
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When I'm helping new InDesign users understand exactly what "flattening transparency" means, I like to show them a concrete example. One way is to export the same simple InDesign file (containing a few overlapping transparent objects) to PDF twice: Once as an Acrobat 4-compatible (PDF 1.3) PDF, which flattens transparent objects, often splitting them up into "atomic regions;" and again as an Acrobat 5-compatible (PDF 1.4) PDF, which supports transparency and thus doesn't flatten.
With Acrobat Pro's Edit Object tool (part of its Advanced Editing arsenal), you can drag individual atomic regions of a flattened image around on the page to show how it was split up. In contrast, dragging objects around on an un-flattened PDF is virtually the same as dragging them around the InDesign file itself, because the overlapping transparent objects remain intact.
Another InDesign trainer on the ID listserv told me of an even better way to demonstrate this, and I thought anyone using InDesign might like to try it for themselves.
Adobe Illustrator, since version 9, has had the ability to create transparent objects and flatten them right in the Illustrator file (something you can't do in InDesign CS). You can move the split-up objects around with the Direct Selection tool to see the results, and you can compare them to an unflattened duplicate on the same page.
To use the live flattener, select overlapping objects in the Illustrator file with your Selection tool. Then open the Flatten Transparency... dialog from the Object menu, choose a Flattener resolution setting (in Illy CS, they're the same as the ones in InDesign CS) and click OK.
To see how the selection had to be split up into a combination of raster and image objects, drag them around the page with the Direct Selection tool. Tres cool!
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Better InCopy Galley/Story View Font
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Adobe InCopy CS users are able to open InDesign files and edit copy in text frames. They can choose to view the text they're editing in either Layout View (same as InDesign), Story View (same as InDesign's Edit -> Edit in Story Editor), or Galley View (just like Story View but it shows accurate line endings).
Since many editors using InCopy are recovering from Microsoft Word, they often prefer to work in Galley or Story view, as it it's most similar to Word's "Normal" view. And of course, these views are a lot easier on the eyes when you're doing heavy text editing, because the editor gets to choose which typeface all text in Galley/View is displayed in. (Just as how InDesign users can choose which typeface to use in the Story Editor via Preferences -> Story Editor Display.)
Seriously -- who wants to edit copy some crazy designer set in yellow-on-green 8-point Adobe Garamond Light Italic? It's a lot easier to edit that copy in, say, Times 18/30, black on white. InCopy users can choose that setting, or any other single typeface, size and linespacing to use in Galley and Story views. It doesn't affect the actual formatting as shown in Layout view, no one has to know how truly near-sighted you are.
In Galley/Story, InCopy users can still apply any sort of character formatting they'd like to the text -- via keyboard shortcuts or the Character palette -- but they'll only see a preview of Regular, Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic (as shown by their display font) style variations in Galley/Story.
What if the story is formatted with a typeface with many different style variations, like Futura? In Galley/Story, Futura Bold looks the same as Futura Extra Bold and Futura Heavy; it's all Times Bold (or the Bold of whatever display font is chosen). This can be maddening if you really need to distinguish between the style variations, such as when you're formatting bold lead-ins followed by extra-bold place names or something.
Clever InCopy users will think, "A-ha! I'll just choose Futura as my Galley/Story view display face!" But alas, it's fruitless. For some reason, InCopy refuses to display any style in Galley/Story other than the usual regular, B, I and BI of whatever typeface is chosen in the Display Typeface pop-up menu. Futura Heavy and Extra Bold and Boldy McBold look exactly the same: Bold. You have to switch to Layout view to distinguish among them.
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The Fix
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InCopy users, here is your salvation:
1. Open the InCopy Preferences dialog from the menu and choose "Galley and Story Display."
2. Click the checkbox next to "Override Preview Font" to turn it on, and choose the typeface that has all the variations you need to see from the dropdown menu of installed fonts. (In this example, you'd choose Futura. If your story is set in Myriad Pro, choose that one, and so on.)
3. Click OK in Preferences and check out the text in Galley/Story. Hallelujah! Semi-bold looks lighter than Bold!
It turns out that in addition to your single chosen Display font, you can have InCopy CS show *one* other font in Galley/Story. It will only display that font if text is actually formatted with it; and if so, it displays ALL the style variations as needed.
You can change the "extra" font on the fly -- perhaps another story in your document uses a different chock full 'o styles typeface -- just by going back to Preferences: Galley and Story Display and selecting a different font.
Woo-hoo!
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BRING HERGEEKNESS ON-SITE
Do you like what you read in DesignGeek? Find anything useful? Bring me in for a session or two of hands-on software training for your workgroup; here in Chicago or any other city near an airport, and you can have me all to yourself. LOL .... I don't charge an arm and a leg, and you'll find we usually go far beyond teaching which dialog does what. I pay attention to your particular projects and workflow, and teach how you can best use the software to get it done easily, accurately and efficiently.
To learn more, or hear what other clients have to say, contact me or fill out the no-obligation "Request a Training Quote' form on Seneca's site:
http://www.senecadesign.com/training/request.html
Recent training clients in Chicago and throughout the U.S. include Playboy Enterprises (InDesign), Loyola Press (InDesign, InCopy); Stralfors (Dreamweaver); Chicago Tribune (GoLive); Unity Christian Publishing (InCopy); Marquette University (InDesign); and Think Design Group (InDesign, InCopy).
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DesignGeek is a free bimonthly publication written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion, a cross-media designer and authorized Adobe and Quark training provider. She owns Seneca Design & Training, Inc. in Chicago, Illinois (http://www.senecadesign.com/).
To subscribe to DesignGeek or read archived issues, go to its home on Seneca's site:
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Contact Seneca by phone at 312-946-1100 or e-mail at info@senecadesign.com
Copyright 2005 by Seneca Design & Training, Inc.
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