Working Efficiently with Objects

Working efficiently with objects also entails employing reusable styles but goes beyond to reusable objects as well.
Object Styles
Let’s review: InDesign operates on a container-to-content model where everything in the document is either content—text, images, paths—or a container to hold content. Text, for instance, must be contained in either a text frame or a path text object. In addition to container and content, InDesign also cares about attributes. Thus, InDesign deals with containers and content and with the attributes of each. Paragraph and character styles govern text content formatting attributes but not the attributes of the frame containing the text. Paragraph styles, for instance, have no bearing on the number of columns in the text frame or the transparency of text. That and much more is left to the dominion of object styles, which record and apply the attributes of containers. If you open the Object Styles panel from the Window menu, you’ll find three preloaded entries—None, Basic Graphics Frame, and Basic Text Frame (see Figure A). Each style is listed in brackets denoting that it is undeletable; you can edit these styles and change their definitions, but you can’t get rid of them. The None style you want because it wipes out pretty much every attribute—fill, stroke, effects, everything. Basic Graphics Frame and Basic Text Frame reduce a selected object to default options; for a graphics frame, for example, that means 1 pt black stroke, no fill, nothing else. One extremely useful option is the ability to set a user-created object style as the default for newly created graphics or text frames. Remember, a graphic frame is not only one into which you’ll place imagery; it’s also any unfilled decorative path such as a block of color, an ellipse, and so on. On the Object Styles panel flyout menu, choose any existing object style from the Default Graphic Frame Style submenu to format every new graphic frame as you draw it, which is an even faster and more efficient method of styling multiple objects than drawing and then applying the style. The Default Text Frame Style offers the same choice for text frames. The rest of the panel is remarkably similar to the other four Styles panels, with a re-orderable style list, the ability to group styles in nested folders, and buttons for New, Delete, Clear Overrides, and Clear Attributes Not Defined by Style. What’s the difference between the latter two? Object styles can be defined to include every possible attribute but are rarely so defined. Instead, many attributes are simply not enabled. For instance, you may have an object style that doesn’t include a drop shadow. Now, if you applied the style to an object and then selectively gave the object a drop shadow, that effect is an attribute not defined by the style. Clear Overrides, on the other hand, is relevant if the style does define a drop shadow but you later change the shadow angle on the individual object. Double-clicking a style or choosing Style Options from the panel flyout menu will open the robust Object Style Options dialog (see Figure B). Every attribute that may be given to a container— and many for content—is organized within this dialog. On the General pane, in the Style Settings area, is an expandable tree detailing the attributes defined in the style. The list of attributes on the left matches the summary of Style Settings and offers in one place access to just about every option you can set on the Swatches, Stroke, Effects, Story, Text Wrap, and other frames and in the Corner Options, Text Frame Options, Anchored Object Options, Effects Options, and other dialogs. Beneath the deceptively named Basic Attributes list is a replicated Effects Options section. Using the Effects For drop-down menu to select the element affected, you can apply the various Photoshop-esque transparency effects to containers and contents and individually to fills, strokes, text, and images. Although most creatives prefer to design a live object on the page or pasteboard, applying needed attributes, and then produce an object style from the object, others know precisely what they want and can build the style in Object Style Options from scratch, by setting options without an object ready. Which way you choose depends on your particular work style. The Preview box at the bottom of the dialog will show changes in a selected object as you make them either during initial style creation or later tweaking.

next to come............
Libraries
Snippets
Style Shortcuts
Quick Apply
Scripting

Sharing Reusable Settings in InDesign

Collaboration doesn’t just mean sharing a page or a document. Often designers work together on separate documents within the project, on different projects of a larger campaign, or, especially within in-house creative and production departments, with a variety of different projects and campaigns that share common attributes. Whenever a designer re-creates something that would more easily be obtained another way, time and money are wasted. I don’t know about you, but I hate blowing time or money on anything that doesn’t bring a smile to somebody’s face. Although everything that follows has been covered, in depth, in other chapters, a review is warranted. Besides, here it’s all in one place, in succinct how-tos. The following settings may be saved out of InDesign as reusable settings and then shared to other InDesign or InCopy users.

Dictionaries

User dictionaries, including added, removed, ignored, and excepted spellings and hyphenations.

Export Go to Edit ➢Spelling ➢Dictionary and click the Export button. You’ll be prompted to save a Word List.txt file. Change the filename to something unique and meaningful in case the recipient receives multiple exported dictionaries.

Import Go to Edit ➢Spelling ➢Dictionary and click the Import button. When prompted, locate the TXT file you received from a collaborator. Importing a dictionary adds it to the current document’s document-level dictionary. If you import a dictionary with all documents closed, the word list will become part of the default InDesign dictionary and thus applicable to all new documents you create.

Paragraph, Character, Table, Cell, and Object Styles

The various styles aren’t saved to external files but rather become part of the INDD documents

in which they’re used. Thus, there is no export instruction.

Import On each of the styles panels there is an Import command—for example, Import Character Styles on the Character Styles panel. Execute that command, and then, in the resulting Open dialog, navigate to and choose the INDD InDesign document or INCX InCopy document containing the styles you’d like to load into the current document. Loading styles with all documents closed make those permanent parts of InDesign, and the styles will therefore be available in every new document you create.

Both the Character Styles and Paragraph Styles panels offer the Load All Text Styles command, which will load both character and paragraph styles in one step. Similarly, the Table Styles and Cell Styles panels have a command to load both of those in a single step as well.

Swatches

As are styles, color swatches are saved as part of the documents in which they’re used. Unlike styles,

however, they can also be saved to external files that can then be shared among other InDesign documents

as well as saved to Photoshop and Illustrator.

Export On the Swatches panel flyout menu, choose Save Swatches. This command is disabled until you select a nondefault swatch in the panel itself. When prompted, save the Adobe Swatch Exchange ASE file to disk.

Import Choose the Load Swatches command from the Swatches panel flyout menu in InDesign, Illustrator, or Photoshop and load the ASE file.

Stroke Styles

Custom-designed striped, dotted, or dashed stroke styles.

Export On the Strokes panel flyout menu, choose Custom Stroke Styles. If you have created any custom stroke styles, the Save button will be available. Click it and choose a destination for your stroke styles.

Import To import, return to the Custom Stroke Styles dialog and choose the Load button.