The Power of Typography


Take away all the fancy features of InDesign, and you expose the core of what really makes InDesign so special: typography. In fact, with a simple glance at a few columns of text in a newspaper or magazine, you can usually tell whether InDesign was used to lay out the page. My first real job (when I say "real," I mean "paying") was as a typesetter, and I used a sophisticated system in which I typed in codes to change typefaces. Then I had to wait until I developed the output from the imagesetter in a darkroom to see what my page actually looked like. Although that may sound archaic (and I assure you, it was), the result was perfectly kerned type, clear spacing, and immaculate columns.

At the time, PageMaker and QuarkXPress were touting how desktop publishing was going to change the world (which it did), but as a type professional, I simply couldn't get the same beautiful typography that the "archaic" systems offered. You could buy a CD of 10,000 fonts for $20, but the quality you got in return wasn't close to what you were used to seeing from a high-end typesetter. To many, the fine art of typography was lost. But all stories have a happy ending, and in our story, InDesign is the hero that saves the day.

Features such as optical kerning, optical margin alignment, the Paragraph Composer, and OpenType support bring professional-level typesetting into the hands of any designer. And through the use of paragraph and character styles for text, you can have InDesign set perfect text without skipping a beat.

Fonts and OpenType Support

Before we get into the text features themselves, let's talk about fonts. InDesign has full support for OpenType fonts, so you can take advantage of the extended technology such as Unicode and cross-platform compatibility that we discussed back in Chapter 7, "Using Adobe Illustrator CS2." You can access OpenType options from the Character palette menu (see Figure 8.24). Additionally, you can specify OpenType functionality when defining both paragraph and character styles.

Figure 8.24. Specifying OpenType features through the Character palette.


The Glyphs Palette

The Glyphs palette lets you view all glyphs in a typeface, which is extremely helpful when you're looking for a specific glyph, such as the inch mark (which is hard to get because InDesign, in its infinite wisdom, tries to sell you on curly quotes instead). The Glyphs palette also becomes your best friend when using OpenType Pro fonts, which contain thousands of different glyphs, including alternate characters (see Figure 8.25). To view the Glyphs palette, choose Window, Type & Tables, Glyphs. To insert a glyph into your text, just double-click the desired glyph.

Figure 8.25. Viewing the many different glyphs of an OpenType Pro font.


Find Font

I used to have a poster on my wall that read "Whoever dies with the most fonts, wins." I know some people who take that saying to heart, and getting files from those people can sometimes mean needing to reduce the number of fonts they've used in a file.

The Find Font command lets you make global font changes to your document. This is especially useful if you open a document for which you don't have the correct fonts, or if you have several versions of a font and need to replace one version of say, Helvetica, with another.

To replace fonts in your document, choose Type, Find Font. This displays the Find Font dialog box with a list of all fonts used in the document (see Figure 8.26). Select a font from the list and then choose a replacement font from the pop-up menus at the bottom of the dialog box. After you have specified the source and replacement fonts, you can either find and replace specific instances of a font with the Find and Change buttons, or do a global replacement with the Change All button.

Figure 8.26. The Find Font dialog box.


WYSIWYG Font Menu

If you have trouble remembering what your fonts look like, InDesign offers a font preview in the Font menu. You can control this preview through the Font Preview Size setting in the Type preferences panel. The icons that appear to the left of each typeface indicate whether a font is TrueType, PostScript, OpenType, or Multiple Master.

Character Formatting

InDesign has a full range of character-formatting capabilities, from simple stuff such as font and size to very precise control over kerning (space between pairs of characters), tracking (space between a range of characters), scaling (resizing), and baseline shift (vertical position of characters relative to the baseline).

Character formatting can be accomplished using either the Control palette or the Character palette (Window, Type & Tables, Character). The Control palette actually has more functionality than the Character palette because it also includes controls for applying character styles. Two very useful but often-missed dialog boxes can be found in the palette menu (for both the Control and the Character palettes): Underline Options and Strikethrough Options, which give you total control of your underlines and strikethroughs (see Figure 8.27).

Figure 8.27. Choosing to specify options for Underline or Strikethrough attributes.


Kerning and Tracking

InDesign's kerning and tracking controls are particularly useful for making headlines and body text look good and fit the way you want them to. Both kerning and tracking work very subtly but can have a profound effect on the overall aesthetic of the page.

To kern a letter pair, position the insertion point between the two letters and use the kerning controls in the Character palette until the two letters are positioned as desired. Kerning is usually used to reduce whitespace between letter pairs, but it can be used to increase it as well (see Figure 8.28).

Figure 8.28. The word on the top has no kerning applied; the word on the bottom does.


To change the tracking for a block of text, start by selecting the entire block. Use the tracking controls in the Character palette to adjust the spacing of the text.

Did you Know?

Virtually all fonts have instructions (called metrics) that specify adjustments to kerning for certain letter pairs. InDesign, however, has a really slick feature called optical kerning that adjusts the space between letters based on what the letters actually look like together. It's a subtle difference, but I always recommend checking out optical kerning (the first option in the Kerning pop-up menu) anytime you are adjusting letter pairs (see Figure 8.29).

Figure 8.29. Specifying optical kerning in the Control palette.



Paragraph Formatting

The difference between character and paragraph formatting is subtle yet significant: Whereas character formatting affects as little as a single character at a time, paragraph formatting automatically affects the entire paragraph. Keeping this in mind makes it simple to remember what type of formatting category a certain control falls into. For instance, alignment (flush left, center, justified, and so on) is paragraph based because you always affect an entire paragraph with a change to that option.

Paragraph-formatting controls are located primarily in the Paragraph palette, accessed by choosing Window, Type & Tables, Paragraph. Other paragraph-specific options are Paragraph Styles and Paragraph Rules (see the following text for more details on each).

Adobe Paragraph Composer

One incredibly useful but totally invisible technology in InDesign is the Adobe Paragraph Composer, the type engine that controls character placement within InDesign. The Adobe Paragraph Composer is on by default, and it helps create better spacing, hyphenations, and the overall "color" of type. It is especially helpful in justified text.

If you want to use the Single Line Composer instead of the Paragraph Composer, you can switch between the two in the Paragraph palette menu (see Figure 8.30).

Figure 8.30. Specifying the Adobe Paragraph Composer.


Drop Caps

The term drop cap refers to the first character of a paragraph that has been enlarged downward to span more than one line (think books of fairy tales and nursery rhymes). Creating drop caps is almost ridiculously easy in InDesign. All you have to do is click in the desired paragraph and then use the Drop Cap controls in the Paragraph palette to set the height of the drop cap (see Figure 8.31).

Figure 8.31. Specifying a drop cap for the first character in a paragraph.


Paragraph Rules

A rule is a horizontal line above or below a paragraph of text. It looks like an object but acts like text, and it moves with the paragraph if text reflow causes the paragraph to move. Although they are usually simple lines, InDesign rules can be one of many types and can be any color or width.

To create a rule, select a paragraph and then access the Paragraph Rules command from the flyout palette menu on the Paragraph palette or Control palette (in paragraph mode). Select Rule Above or Rule Below from the pop-up menu at the top of the dialog box, and click the Rule On check box.

Did you Know?

To create rules both above and below a paragraph, select Rule Above or Rule Below, click Rule On, choose your desired rule formatting options, repeat the process to create the other rule, and then exit the dialog box.


Styles

Styles are, without a doubt, the most powerful and flexible formatting feature of InDesign. A style is a collection of formatting instructions that can be applied to paragraphs or to characters. With styles you can ensure consistent formatting of all text in your document, and you can reformat vast amounts of text in just a few seconds. Both paragraph styles and character styles can be accessed in the same palette group (choose Window, Type & Tables, Character Styles or Window, Type & Tables, Paragraph Styles).

Paragraph Styles

Paragraph styles are applied to entire paragraphs and contain both paragraph-level formatting, such as alignment, line spacing, and tab stops, and character-level formatting, such as font and font size.

To create a paragraph style, select a paragraph of text and format it as desired. With the paragraph still selected, click the Create New Style button at the bottom of the Paragraph Styles palette. A new paragraph style (titled Paragraph Style 1) appears in the list of styles. Double-click this new style to open the Paragraph Style Options dialog box (see Figure 8.32). From here you can type in a new name for the style and set additional formatting options, if desired.

Figure 8.32. Defining a paragraph style.


To apply a paragraph style to text, select the desired text and click on the name of the style you want to apply to that text. The paragraph will be reformatted to match the selected style.

If you change a style (by changing any of the formatting settings within the Paragraph Style Options dialog box), all paragraphs that have that style applied to them are instantly updated to reflect the changes. This is a huge timesaver and ensures a consistency that you could never achieve if you had to go back and reformat the text manually.

Character Styles

As you might suspect, character styles are styles that are applied to characters, not full paragraphs. Character styles are created, applied, and modified exactly the same way paragraph styles are, but to smaller blocks of text.

Nested Styles

The term nested styles refers to character styles that are embedded inside paragraph styles. By setting up a paragraph style with nested character styles, you can apply complex formatting with one click of a button. For example, if you want to create a numbered list in which the number is bold and colored red, a word is bold and set to small caps, but the rest of the text on the line is normal weight and black, a nested style could apply all those settings at once (see Figure 8.33).

Figure 8.33. A single paragraph style with nested character styles inside it.


To create a nested style, you first create the character styles you need. In the previous example, you would create a character style for text that is bold and colored red. Then you would create a new paragraph style and specify a nested style in which the first character of every paragraph has the bold and red character style applied to it (see Figure 8.34).

Figure 8.34. Defining a nested style.


Did you Know?

You can apply styles quickly while working in text using InDesign's new QuickApply feature. At any point, you can press Command+Return (Ctrl+Enter to bring up a pop-up box with all of your defined styles (see Figure 8.35). You can use your arrow keys to navigate to the style you want to apply, or you can type in the first few letters of the name of the style you are looking for. Press Command+Return (Ctrl+Enter) to apply the style and close the pop-up box.

Figure 8.35. Applying a style via the QuickApply pop-up box.



Setting Tab Stops

Tabs are variable-width spacer characters that you insert into your text by pressing the Tab key on your keyboard. Tab stops are paragraph-formatting instructions that determine how far a tab travels before it stops. Tab stops are created, modified, and deleted in the Tabs palette, which can be displayed by choosing Window, Type & Tables, Tabs (see Figure 8.36).

Figure 8.36. A tabbed list with the tab stops used to create it.


To set a tab stop, click on the type of tab stop you want (left-aligned, centered, right-aligned, or character-aligned), and then either click in the narrow strip above the dialog box ruler at the desired location or simply enter a location measurement in the X field.

If you want this tab stop to have a tab leader (a set of characters leading up to the tab stop), enter the character in the Leader field (see Figure 8.37). If you are creating a character-aligned tab stop, the Align On field becomes active and you can enter a character other than a decimal point (the default) into this field.

Figure 8.37. Setting up a tab leader.


To move an existing tab stop, just drag it to a new location. To delete a tab stop, drag it down off the tab ruler.

Did you Know?

It is easiest to set up tab stops when the Tabs dialog box is positioned directly over the selected paragraph(s). Click the Position Palette Above Text Frame button in the lower-right corner of the Tabs dialog box to snap it over the selected paragraph(s).


Change Case

InDesign has four handy commands for changing text case: UPPERCASE, lowercase, Title Case, and Sentence case. All are available from the Type, Change Case submenu.

Converting Text to Outlines

Converting text to outlines transforms normal text to drawn objects. After being converted, text can no longer be edited as text, but it can be manipulated as a graphic object. This is perfect for creating logos, labels, or other textual graphic treatments. It also lets you use text as a frame within which you can place other graphics.

To convert text to outlines, select the desired text and choose Type, Create Outlines.

The Story Editor

The Story Editor is InDesign's built-in text editor, which looks and feels very much like your age-old word processor. The idea of the Story Editor is that you can edit text without worrying about how it looks in your layout. The text appears consistent in the Story Editor, so you don't have to zoom in to read small point sizes or scroll between pages to make edits.

To activate the Story Editor, select a text frame and choose Edit, Edit in Story Editor (see Figure 8.38). Choose Edit, Edit in Layout to return to the normal view.

Figure 8.38. Using the Story Editor to edit text in a less cluttered environment.


Some useful ideas for using the Story Editor include when you need to edit text in multiple-page layouts. If an article starts on page 2 but then finishes on page 24, you can still see the entire text in the Story Editor window. The Story Editor is also great for editing small type that you might have in your document (such as captions or legal speak) so that you can avoid having to continuously zoom in and out.

You can use the Story Editor Display panel in Preferences to control how text appears in the Story Editor.

Checking Spelling

InDesign has the capability to check the accuracy of your spelling in your document as you type. Just like you might see in a certain popular word processor, misspelled words appear with cute red squigglies under them (see Figure 8.39). To turn on this feature, check Enable Dynamic Spelling in the Spelling panel of Preferences. Additionally, you can check the Enable Autocorrect box in the Autocorrect Preferences panel to have InDesign correct misspelled words as you type.

Figure 8.39. InDesign flags misspelled words as you type.


To perform a traditional spell-check, choose Edit, Check Spelling. The Check Spelling dialog box appears; just click the Start button, and InDesign will find all the words that aren't in the InDesign dictionary (it's interesting to note that InDesign is in the dictionary, but QuarkXPress is not). You can customize a few options for which words get flagged in the Spelling pane of the Preferences dialog box (and, no, there's no option for "don't flag competing products").

Dictionary

As you're checking your spelling, you might run across a word that you know is spelled right that InDesign doesn't recognize, such as qoph (a favorite "legal" word of Scrabble players everywhere). Click the Add button in the Check Spelling dialog box to add the word to your custom dictionary. From that point on, qoph won't be flagged as being spelled incorrectly (which is nice because it wasn't spelled wrong in the first place).

Search and Replace

InDesign's search-and-replace feature is deceptively powerful. In addition to the standard options for finding and changing text, pop-up menus to the right of the Find and Change fields in the Find/Change dialog box contain a very thorough list of special characters that you can search for and replace (see Figure 8.40). You can also search for and replace text or special characters in all open documents with a single command.

Figure 8.40. InDesign enables you to easily specify special characters in the Find/Change dialog box.


The Find/Change dialog box can be accessed by choosing Edit, Find/Change.

Text Frame Options

Each text frame has several options for displaying the text within it. These include multiple columns within a single frame, inset spacing (similar to page margins, but applied to the frame), baseline offset (the vertical distance above or below the imaginary line the text sits on), and vertical justification (the vertical placement of the text in its text box). To change any of these options, select a text frame and choose Object, Text Frame Options (see Figure 8.41).

Figure 8.41. The Text Frame Options dialog box lets you specify columns of text within a single text frame.




Sams Teach Yourself Adobe Creative Suite 2 All in One
Sams Teach Yourself Creative Suite 2 All in One
ISBN: 067232752X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 225
Authors: Mordy Golding

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net