LAYOUT : the newsletter of page design

Normally if you want to fill some text with an image rather than a flat colour or gradient, the routine in Adobe InDesign (and QuarkXPress too) is to convert the text into a group of irreguarly shaped boxes and put the image inside them. The obvious problem with using InDesign’s Text > Create Outlines command (and QuarkXPress’ Style > Text to Box command) is that once you’ve done it, you can’t re-edit the text; instead, you would have to delete the current text-shaped boxes and start again.

Here’s a way of doing it in InDesign CS2 and CS3 without converting the text to outlines but keeping it as live, editable text. Place an image on your page, then draw a text frame and put some text inside. Make sure the text frame is in front of the image.

Select the text frame and use the Swatches palette to give it a fill colour of [Paper]. The text itself should be [Registration].

With the text frame still selected, open the Effects palette and apply the Lighten transparency blending mode.

This causes the image behind the text frame to show through the black text characters.

Align the text and image frames precisely, and you have a textured text fill.

And best of all, the text remains editable. Here, we changed the word ‘water’ to ‘layout’ simply by typing over it.

Just remember that this trick only works when designing over a white (no colour) background.

One of the causes of Adobe InDesign CS3 or InCopy CS3 crashing under Mac OS X with a message saying ‘The application has unexpectedly quit’ may be a corrupted font cache. Adobe programs rely on a cache file named Adobefnt10.lst to speed up the loading of fonts; if this file gets corrupted, it can cause InDesign and InCopy to bomb out during launch. To fix this, search for the cache file by name using the Find command or Spotlight, then delete it. Now launch InDesign or InCopy, and a new font cache file will be generated, hopefully clearing the problem.

Just a note for those of you preparing layout templates in Adobe InDesign CS2… The program’s Object Styles do not let you set up a default set of attributes for picture boxes (otherwise known as ‘Rectangle/Ellipse/Polygon Frames‘). Very confusingly, the [Basic Graphics Frame] default Object Style actually applies to boxes drawn with the plain shape tools (’Rectangle/Ellipse/Polygon’ without the cross-through inside). No matter what formatting you customise in the [Basic Graphics Frame] Object Style, none of it will apply to picture boxes, only to plain (non-graphic) shapes.
To set up a custom default for picture boxes, make sure nothing is selected on the page (or close all pages in order to set up an application-wide default), click on the Rectangle/Ellipse/Polygon Frame tool in the Tools palette as required, then make your formatting changes in the Swatches palette, Stroke palette and so on. Now every new picture box you draw will be formatted appropriately.
If you want to set up more than one type of default picture box, well you can’t — defaults come in singles, that’s what a ‘default’ means. To create two or more alternative formatting ‘defaults’ for picture boxes, create them as Object Styles.

Have you ever laid out a page in a QuarkXPress Print Layout and wished you could save it to HTML as well? Well, to do this properly and take advantage of the web design tools, you should really copy or synchronize the content over to a Web Layout. But if all you want is a rough-and-ready HTML version of what you’ve already got in the existing Print Layout, hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys, then choose File > Export > HTML.

Adobe has released version 8 of its high-end technical documentation authoring program, FrameMaker. The software now lets you import Flash SWF files, 3D models and interactive Adobe Captivate elements as well as the usual image and graphic file formats. FrameMaker is now also Unicode compliant. These features are intended to strengthen the program’s XML desktop publishing and technical book authoring functionality. Adobe’s Naresh Gupta said the upgraded program will “simplify the delivery of high-impact documentation, no matter what the language or technology platform” — except Mac, of course. Windows (£437.11, upgrade £145.36) and Solaris Unix (£646, upgrade 208.52) only, available at the end of July. A server edition will be released in October, priced £3,888, upgrade £1,943.
www.adobe.com/framemaker

When you have grouped two or more items on a page in QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign, this doesn’t prevent you from editing the individual items independently from each other. In QuarkXPress, click away from the selected group, then click on any of its items using the Content tool: you can then reshape and move that item freely. As soon as you click back on any of the items using the Item tool, the entire group is selected again. InDesign uses a similar approach: use the Direct Selection tool (the white arrow) to work with individual objects, then pick up the entire group again using the Selection tool (black arrow).

By the way, the keyboard shortcut for ungrouping is Command-U (Mac) or Ctrl-U (Win) for QuarkXPress, but Command-Alt-G (Mac) or Ctrl-Alt-G (Win) for InDesign.

Markzware has released version 3 of QuarkXPress to InDesign (Q2ID), a plug-in that makes it possible to import QuarkXPress files into Adobe InDesign. This latest release lets you import version 3.3 through to 7.x Quark files, opening them up using Adobe InDesign CS3. £139 (€199) full version, £59 (€99) upgrade.
www.markzware.nl/q2id

IT developer NetCollaborators has launched a ready-to-go, subscription-based file transfer service for organisations that need to send and receive large files across the Internet reliably and securely. The company is targetting the service specifically at small businesses, corporates and print shops. The last-named can then offer dedicated remote upload support to their customers who might otherwise be using FTP or even email to submit PDFs and other production files for output. Print shop customers don’t have to manually download and install a special program to make it work — it’s all handled over the web using Java. To be honest, we don’t understand the pricing scheme, but you can always ask for a personalised quote.
www.netcollaborators.com

[Alistair writes:] I had a problem installing Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Edition on a new PC at the weekend. After an extremely long installation process the installer appeared to finish but then flashed up a message saying: “Licensing for this product has stopped working. You cannot use this product at this time. You must repair the problem by uninstalling and then reinstalling this product…” At first, I thought it was my own fault for trying to put CS3 on a Vista machine, but Adobe recognises this installer message as an issue and has posted a CS3 installer troubleshooting guide on its support website. However, if the troubleshooting advice looks challenging, do what I did: follow the recommendation of the original message by uninstalling and then reinstalling. It worked for me.

Further to Monday’s mention of the beta, Badia has now officially released version 3.5 of OpenNow Pro for InDesign CS3. Like its QuarkXPress XTension equivalent, the plug-in lets you call up comprehensive information about placed pictures, and quickly open the image file in any program you want. It’s a useful little product but seems pricey at $44.99. Mac only.