Long Hours of Design

In addition to experiencing it myself, I’ve seen numerous reports on the web of people having trouble pasting text from Word 2008 (Mac) to various Adobe applicaitons.

When copying text from Word, the resulting paste in, say, InDesign is a graphic, not text. ^{[ 1 ]}

While I can’t vouch for every Adobe application, the general rule seems to be:

You have to paste the text at an insertion point; ie, you have to have a blinking cursor in order to paste as text.

So, in InDesign, you would either have to drag out a new text frame, make sure you’ve got an insertion point, and then paste. Or, ensure you’ve got an insertion point blinking in an existing text frame, and then paste.

That should solve it.

Now and again, in every designers life, a little PDF form must fall.

At some point, we’ve probably all tackled creating a PDF form.

And, much like Hurcules must have done after being assigned his twelve labours, we uttered a lament of utter despair — “Oooohhhh, man! Do I have to?” ^{[ 1 ]}

That said, here’s a simple tip relating to calculations in forms and zero sums.

Zero Sums

Lets say you want someone to click several options (“Item 1”, “Item 2”, “Item 3”) and you set Acrobat to automatically sum the total.

Acrobat will display “0” in the results field when nothing is clicked. Sometimes, you just don’t want the “0” to display.

To hide this “0” until you’ve got an actual value:

1. Enter your “Calculate” properties as you normally would
2. Enter this javascript into the “Run Custom Validation Script” field, under the “Validate” portion of the properties box.

if (event.value == 0) event.value = ""; 

Violá! The zero is hidden.

Phenomenal, gigantic projects! Itty bitty versioning system. ^{[ 1 ]}

Of course, when we think of a version control system (usually intended for source code), we think of Subversion, CVS, Adobe Version Cue, and their ilk, and generally regard such systems as multi-user entities.

However, even the solo-designer needs some kind of versioning system — even as simple as a “Version 1”, “Version 2” etc naming convention. Many design groups I’ve worked with use such a convention.

This system works fine for the solo designer and the normal design group for a few reasons:

1. The learning curve for other systems (Version Cue, etc.) is relatively high and can be a lot of time to invest.
2. While there might be multiple people working on similar projects (in a print arena), generally there is only one person working on a single file at a time.
3. Source code versioning tools such as “diff and merge” are useless for print design projects; thus, any extra overhead involved in CVS, etc is unnecessary.

So, if we are going to use some kind of simple versioning system, it should at least be A. consistent — versions are updated the same throughout the system. And should be B. relatively easy to implement and use.

I decided to solve this problem with a simple AppleScript ^{[ 2 ]}

Open this script in Script Editor

or

Download this Script

Select a file (or files) in the Finder and then run this script. This script duplicates that file(s) and adds “v2”  to the new file. Run the script on that file, and it duplicates and names “v3”. It also asks you for version comments, which are added to the file.

Easy and consistent.

Et violå! An “itty-bitty” versioning system.

GREP: Add Periods to End of Paragraph

GREP: Add Periods to End of Paragraph

Find What: ((?<!.)(w|[!?)])(?!.)$)|((?<!.)( )$)

Change to: $1.

What: This GREP query finds paragraphs which don’t end in a period. The “Change to” adds a period at the end of the paragraph.

Why: Often, I get text from a Word document with missing periods. It’s rare that these occur MID paragraphs; they are often left off before line breaks.

Or, fragments (like bullet points or cell contents) get turned into full sentances, and periods need to be added.

I wouldn’t recommend running this query as a “change all” on your whole document, but run it one to the next.

Doing this by hand isn’t always all that tedious, but using the “Find / Change” panel, especially for discontinuous paragraphs, is substantially faster.

How:

1. “Negative Look-behind” — “This text only when is is NOT preceded by…”

1A. A period. ^{[ 1 ]}’

Sometimes you have a whitespace character after a period. So we ignore those.

2. Any word character

2A. - or -

2B. Either ! or ? or )

The paragraph is either going to end with a letter (a “word character”) an exclamation mark, a question mark, or a close parens. So we’re searching for one of those.

3A. “Negative Look-Ahead” — “ONLY if this is NOT followed by…”

3B. A period

We don’t want to find characters followed by a period — those don’t need to be fixed. So we find ones without.

4. Search for this at the END of a paragraph

OR ( | )

5. “Negative Look-behind” — “This text only when is is NOT preceded by…”

5A. A period.

Sometimes we find the end of a paragaph, with a hanging whitespace and no period. So, we want to search for this. It’s easier to look for it as an “or” statement. In addiiton, when we place a period in, we don’t want to keep that extra space. Doing it this way allows us to do that.

6. A space

7. Search for this at the END of a paragraph

Underline-y Goodness

Paragraph rules and underlines are highly under-appreciated.

Here’s a fun little underline technique for creating a tag exclaiming the newness of an item.

"New" Tag

"New" Tag

This is pretty simple.

1. Type “New” with a space before and a space after.
2. I’ve styled this with small caps and brought the size down a bit.
3. Now, we create an underline, staring with the space before NEW and ending with the space after. Make the “Weight” about the same size as the rest of the body text. Adjust the offset until it looks right.
   
   New Tag Underline Settings

   New Tag Underline Settings

   That’s it!

You don’t need to be an acrobat for this balancing act.

Here’s a useful InDesign feature I often forget about: “Balance Ragged Lines.”

Ragged lines come up in a block of right- or left-aligned text and depend on word lengths, column width and similar variables. Instead of a natural ebb and flow of line endings, ragged lines jut out unevenly like some sort of typographical flotsam and jetsam

“Balance Ragged Lines,” buried under the Paragraph panel flyout, does pretty much what it sounds like it does. ^{[ 1 ]} It adjusts each line in the paragraph so they’re all of approximately equal length—and so there aren’t lines sticking out every which way.

Example

Here are the ragged lines I want to tackle.

Ragged Lines, Oh My!

Ragged Lines, Oh My!

Now, this isn’t actually so bad; my lines flow pretty much as I’d expect them to.

But the bottom two lines—where the URL breaks onto the last line—that’s a problem. I want that URL on one line, not two.

I could shore this up with forced line breaks—but I can’t add just one (putting the URL on the bottom line) as then I’d REALLY have some ragged lines. No, in this case I’d have to add a break to the end of every line.

I’d get this:

A Chicken for Every Pot, and a Forced Break for Every Line

A Chicken for Every Pot, and a Forced Break for Every Line

Yikes! Too much.

So let’s use Balance Ragged Lines.

Balance Ragged Lines—My Hero!

Balance Ragged Lines—My Hero!

And Viola! Well-balanced lines.

The Pièce de résistance

The Pièce de résistance

Caveats

This is a great feature, but I’d caution against its overuse.

Applying “Balance Ragged Lines” can sometimes destroy the typographic-rhythm paragraph lines have, and make them look somehow “unnatural” or “just not right.”

I’d recommend steering clear of using this everywhere—but in those places where unwieldy lines have gotten away from you, “Balance Ragged Lines” is a real peach.

Or: How many rules could a paragraph rule if a paragraph rule could rule? ^{[ 1 ]}

As dull as they may seem, paragraph rules are actually amazingly versatile, and with a little ingenuity and “Thinking Outside the Rules” you can easily harness paragraph rules and make yourself a superstar.

Or at least semi-pro.

In addition to my own posts on the subject, here are some great resources on paragraph rules.

http://www.theindesigner.com/blog/episode-50-tab-topped-text-frames

http://www.theindesigner.com/blog/episode-49-paragraph-rules-rule

http://www.layersmagazine.com/indesign-paragraph-rules.html

http://typophile.com/node/29199

http://www.fontshop.be/details.php?entry=262

Sometimes, you just need more space.

Like me, (6”4’) after being on an airplane for 6 hours—sometimes you just need to stretch out.

Well, there’s plenty of ways to do that, typography-wise, but here’s a nice little guy who can be easily overlooked.

The em space. (Or Señor em space-o)

What’s an em space? From Adobe: ^{[ 1 ]}

Em Space
Equal in width to the size of the type. In 12‑point type, an em space is 12 points wide.

En Space
One‑half the width of an em space.

An em space (or an en space) is great for spots where, otherwise, you might be tempted to use multiple spaces.

Here’s an example:

Multiple Spaces

Multiple Spaces

With Em Spaces

With Em Spaces

Using an em space follows “The Fewer the Better” Rule. As well, while multiple spaces can be adversely affected by tracking or kerning, an em space will give you a consistent width no matter where you use it.

So use the em space.

And be happy.[3. Em and En Spaces are located: In Adobe InDesign, Type:Insert White Space: and in Quark XPress, Utilities;Insert Character:Special Characters: