InDesign mavens, gurus, et al.

Submitted by mara06 on Tue, 2007-09-25 16:28.

Member's Forum

I'm trying. Really I am. Designed a whole damn magazine in InDesign earlier this month and lived to tell about it. But why did they make it so hard to do fractions? The Glyph thing is so cumbersome, and in the Open Type font I'm using, offers nothing more creative than 1/8, 1/4, and 1/2. I need 5/8 and am having to muck around with superscript, subscript, baseline adjustments and hunting for a proper fraction virgule thingie (whatever they're called) to replace the common slash.

Am I just too picky a typesetter type to be allowed to live, or are there shortcuts out there for the grabbing that I've not discovered?

Mara

I'd recommend creating

Submitted by natobasso on Tue, 2007-09-25 16:37.

I'd recommend creating styles for what you need and you won't have to recreate every time.

A great adobe vid on working with text:
http://www.adobe.com//designcenter/video_workshop/index.html?id=vid0075

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Powerpoint is not a design application

Gahhhhh...

Submitted by JimD on Tue, 2007-09-25 16:57.

Don't adjust baselines. Here's what you need to do.

Open the InDesign document (to make these changes permanent, do it without a document open). Go into InDesign Preferences and select the Advanced Type panel. Enter the following numbers.
Superscript: 52% 35%
Subscript: 52% 0%
Small Cap: 75%

Now use superscript and subscript on the two numbers in the fraction and check the results. Obviously, you can adjust the percentages I listed to your liking.

The results are not perfect (the divider bar may appear too thick in comparison to the numbers), but it's a whole lot better than sitting there and adjusting baselines every time.

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Visit Creative Guy for graphics and Mac OS tips, tricks, tutorials and commentary

Creating styles...hmm...something else to learn fast on deadline

Submitted by mara06 on Tue, 2007-09-25 17:28.

Ah, so I have to create my own stuff? Gee. In Quark, I just type the fraction and choose "Fraction" from the style pull-down menu. I'll check out that video, but naturally, I'm on deadline and wish there were an intuitive quick-fix. GRRRRR!

Mara

CG's fix seems pretty quick

Submitted by natobasso on Tue, 2007-09-25 18:51.

CG's fix seems pretty quick and easy...

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Powerpoint is not a design application

Proper Fraction (script) by Dan Rodney

Submitted by shoaf on Wed, 2007-09-26 15:37.

This script has worked AWESOME for me! It's a free deal that you can run in InDesign. Just select the unformatted fraction, and double-click the script in the scripts panel (palette).

I have found, though, that I'd like the fractions tracked a little tighter in some fonts, YMMV.

http://www.danrodney.com/scripts/properfraction.html

Wow! Nice!

Submitted by mara06 on Wed, 2007-09-26 16:50.

I downloaded that script and tried it. It's great! I'm going to check out other things this guy has now. Thank you VERY much!

Mara

Sweet!

Submitted by geoff on Wed, 2007-09-26 19:25.

Thanks for this! Maybe we should make a new topic where people can share these types of things?

Ivan's still searching for

Submitted by natobasso on Wed, 2007-09-26 19:38.

Ivan's still searching for an InDesign guru for regular postings...

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Powerpoint is not a design application

Since posting this, I've

Submitted by mara06 on Wed, 2007-09-26 16:31.

Since posting this, I've noticed that with an Open Type font selected, you can pull down the dialog box (click in the far upper right of the window), choose Open Type (it's at the top of the list), and choose Fractions from its pop-out menu. For non-Open Type fonts, that handy-dandy choice isn't available.

Thanks for the shortcut CG. I'll try that with my non-Open Type fonts (all three squijillion of them).

Mara