Getting the Text


Although you can type the text of a book or article directly into threaded text frames in InDesign, in most cases you will import text from a word processor. Most writers and copy editors will not have page-layout software and will, therefore, provide the story in an importable form such as Microsoft Word. Depending on your production workflow, they may have applied style sheets to the text in the word processor to indicate how the text should be formatted in InDesign.

Importing text files

The process of importing text files ‚ and otherwise adding text to a document ‚ is explained in full in Chapter 14. When working with documents that require threaded text frames, text is generally imported according to a few simple steps:

  1. Using the Type tool, select the first text frame that will contain the imported story.

    If you need to select a master text frame, Shift+ z +click it or Ctrl+Shift+click it.

  2. Choose File Place or press z +D or Ctrl+D.

  3. Use the controls at the top of the Place dialog box to locate the word processing file, then click on it.

  4. Check Convert Quotes to convert any straight quotes to curly, typesetter's quotes; check Retain Format to import style sheets with the text; and check Show Import Options if the text contains any special elements such as tables that need to be converted.

  5. Click Open to import the text into the selected text frame.

    Text is likely to overflow the first frame, as shown in Figure 16-5.

Other text-importing techniques

InDesign lets you place text in several ways, not just by using the Place command:

  • If your word processor supports drag and drop, you can drag a text selection directly from your word processor into an InDesign page. This creates a new text frame with the dragged text.

  • You can copy and paste text from a word processor to an InDesign frame (note that the text's formatting will not be copied ).

  • Finally, you can drag a text file's icon from the desktop or folder into an InDesign page. This results in a loaded-text icon that you then use either to click the text frame you want to add it to or to click and drag to draw a new text frame in which to place the text.

 

Handling word processor style sheets

Whether writers are working on a 1,000-word story or a 40-page chapter of a book, chances are they're using some sort of formatting or style sheets in their word processing files. This might be as little as bold on headlines and space between paragraphs, or as sophisticated as different style sheets for each level of heading and type of paragraph in the manuscript.

When you import a word processing file into InDesign, you can bring the formatting and style sheets with it. (See Chapter 14 for a complete list of formatting options that will import from Microsoft Word.)

Isolated formatting might be used to indicate which style sheets should be applied in InDesign ‚ for example, the writer might apply bold to one-line paragraphs that should be formatted as a subhead. However, if the writer applies appropriate paragraph style sheets to text in their word processor, much of the formatting in InDesign can be automated by importing the style sheets.

Note ‚  

Microsoft Word character style sheets are not imported into InDesign.

You can use these imported paragraph style sheets in two different ways, depending on whether style sheets with the same name already exist in the InDesign document. (To import style sheets with a word processing file, check Retain Format in the Place dialog box [File Place, or z +D or Ctrl+D].)

Editing imported paragraph style sheets

If you import paragraph style sheets with text, you can simply use the style sheets specified in the word processor to format the text. This method works well for designs that do not follow a template ‚ for example, brochures or feature stories. You might import the text, experiment with formatting it, then edit the imported style sheets in InDesign to reflect your design.

For example, say you import a magazine feature article that is formatted with three paragraph style sheets (Headline, Byline, and Body Copy) into an InDesign document that does not contain style sheets with those names . The three style sheets are added to InDesign's Paragraph Styles list and have similar specifications to what they had in the word processor. However, since InDesign offers more formatting options, you might edit those style sheets to fine-tune the text formatting. To edit a paragraph style sheet, select it in the Paragraph Styles pane, click the palette menu arrow, and choose Style Options as shown in Figure 16-6.


Figure 16-6: You can import simple style sheets from a word processor, then edit them in InDesign using the Style Options command in the Paragraph Styles pane.

Overriding imported paragraph style sheets

In documents that follow a template, you can provide writers with style sheet names that must be applied to their text. For example, say you're working on a tri-fold brochure that is part of an entire series of similar tri- folds . The writer might format the text with five paragraph style sheets that also exist in your InDesign document: Heads, Subheads, Body Copy, Bullets, and Quotes. The style sheet specifications in the word processor don't matter ‚ only the name counts ‚ because InDesign document style sheets override imported style sheets.

For example, the writer's style sheets use standard fonts such as Times and Helvetica along with bold and italic type styles to distinguish the types of text. But when the word processing file is imported into InDesign, the style sheets are overridden with InDesign style sheets that have the same name but specify the actual fonts used by the designer and the many formatting options available in InDesign.

You can supply writers either with actual style sheets or with only style sheet names:

  • To supply style sheets, export text from a similar story in RTF format, which writers can open in their word processor; the word processor will add the style sheet names in the RTF file to its own style sheet list. The writers can then save these style sheet names to a template file and use that template for future documents. To export text, use the Export dialog box (File Export, or z +E or Ctrl+E) and choose Rich Text Format from the Format menu.

  • Or you can simply give writers a list of style sheet names that they can create themselves to their own specifications. In this case, it's particularly important that the style sheets created in the word processor have exactly the same names as those in the InDesign document.




Adobe InDesign CS Bible
Adobe InDesign CS3 Bible
ISBN: 0470119381
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 344
Authors: Galen Gruman

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