Hi all,

I'm having a problem with the text box inset in ID (cs2). Even with everything set to 0 and no indents or anything in styles or anywhere I can find, the text is still not quite flush with text box. It is slightly inset left and top. Plus, a box with display-size type and one body copy size text are inset slightly differently, which makes snapping them both to a guide worthless. Even putting everything in one text box doesn't help... the larger type is inset slightly differently than body text!

The problem is raised in the Adobe forum and elsewhere, but without solution. Is this true for any of you? Is there a solution? Am I just missing something? I need to align hundreds of display type and copy boxes and I'm beginning to pine for QXpress!

TIA,

Trisolo

So, it seems to depend on the first letter in the box. A, T, Z, G, etc. are flush; but D, U, L, for example are inset. So if the display type and body copy below both start with the right letter I'm okay, if not, I have to go in and manually align the boxes a fraction and of course the boxes try to snap if guides are on.... this is a bit of a nightmare....

I got it to align top (basically, some letters go a tad above) by setting the First Baseline Offset to Cap Height....

Trisolo

Tri I am no Indesign or Quark Jock but it does sound like what you want to do has to be done with a certain level of kerning and or leading to get it exact. We have a typographer in the office who is always tweaking letters in or out to get the text alignment perfect. Things nobody else even sees or notices. He is from the old school worked type setting before the age of computers. Much of the art is lost today with desktop publishing. Every one thinks they know how to set type.

Agreed... DTP has unleashed a slew of wannabe typesetters on the world. But I don't *think* I'm one of 'them'. I was setting type long before the PC revolution. I was weaned on lead and took m–dashes from mummy's breast. I learned kerning on a Headliner in the "cold-type days" and have kerned 10pt type with an exacto.... I'm a kerning fool!

aber...this is not a kerning thing.. not the lint between my baby's toes.... It's how ID tracks the first glyph against the text box. Not overly well I'm afraid. As far as I can see... hence my question: Am I missing something. A way to line everything up against the left-hand edge of a text box?

ta,

Trisolo

Now, you've heard me talk about the crappy font handling in OS X, this is one of the times where designers run into it. This is a pretty well known issue, and I believe it has to do with something about the space given in the FONT DESIGN, in each letterform for OS X aliasing. Usually a proportional channel of white space around each letterform. At small sizes, you may not see this, it's so small, it's not as much of problem... but holy crap, at larger sizes, this zone becomes relatively Huge. And it means that you can't set something like a drop cap with total precision using the text box in ID as any kind of a LEFT/RIGHT guide. Or it'll depend on the font. Normally you have to put your large drop caps or whatever in separate text boxes and use regular guides or some combination of paragraph styles, or kerning to align the type perfectly.

What ID needs (and believe me, I've complained about this numerous times, along with probably every other designer on the planet) is to have the text inset box controls work in negative numbers, so you can OUTSET or hang individual individual characters or paragraphs relative to the text box, and have pixel level control to address the box edge if you have reason to want to align to it. Even Quark didn't do this perfectly. If you stripped off the p1 text insets, you'd still see white space for some characters on the left or top, like it wasn't perfectly aligning. But it was less noticeable than in ID.

Usually, you really just have to suck it up and be careful about the way you align things like drop caps, or any time you're mixing large and small type together. ID is more concerned about preventing overset text than it is aligning letterforms perfectly.

My rule of thumb is, if you're using a letterform at a large enough size where the white space in its glyph or whatever is an issue, it's better to treat it as a piece of art, and realize that all bets are off when it comes to aligning it as text.

You just can't rely on the Text box edge to align your type for anything more than the basics. There are spaces built into fonts when they're designed. The left edge of a font SHOULD align with the left edge of its available pixels in its map, but it ain't always the case. When you increase a character size, you're always bringing in a proportional zone of white space that is used with OS X's shrink/grow thing, as well as with the operating system to keep your fonts spaced properly so they're readable. Ironically, it causes a few issues with precision typesetting, so you have to be careful when you mix and match sizes now.

Brother Tri,
am i right that you're talking about this?

If yes, i agree that it's crappy. But AFAIK it's roughly the same scenario using Quark. Personally i don't know why this is so. Maybe everyone is SOOO used to this behaviour that nobody thought about fixing this? All i know is that the DTP-Scene is packed with ultra-conservative people.. :-)

My solution was and always is to put a space right before the headline and then use negative kerning on that space. But i am sure this hand-fiddling is not an option for you with that endless number text-boxes.

Thalo i understand that spaces are built into fonts, i made many fonts myself. Proper fonts have their chars starting at 0, aligned to the left. When i open a font in Fontographer/Fontlab/etc. it's obvious. The kerning and spacing of the font is done via the space to the right and additional kerning tables. Man, my english skills to describe the delicate problems are lacking now...

Hm, i opened the font using the Fontlab Demo-Version and found out that the chars are NOT aligned left to position 0,0....

Err, now i'm confused. The font is called Trade Gothic, it's not freeware crap.

Addition: I'm now less confused. I checked the capital W and it starts at complete left position zero. I assume this to make many lines of the font look good. ...
Now my final conclusion is the problem lies in the fonts, not in the Application. And it seems that all fonts are made this way. Anyway there should be some special feature in the Layout-App for this case.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: smithz,

Yes, smithz, that's it. No left alignment. If it originates in the computer generated fonts then I guess I'll just have to live with it. But for me, now, that means going in aligning everything by hand. And as thalo says..."treat it as a piece of art"... but actually, at this stage I think I'll just let it go. Probably no one will notice other than me, (and I hope not the publisher,) but I will, and that pisses me off. I don't remember having this problem, to this degree, in Quark. (I've never used Quark in OSX, only OS9)

I guess I'm just being a bit pedantic. This is a large museum catalogue project (350 pages) and if it's well received there are 6 more in the wings... so I was hoping to get this sorted before the rest come in.

Thanks,

Tri...

Well it's also roughly the same way in Quark (OS9 and OSX). Tomorrow i'll go to work and kick some layouts in Quark 4.11 OS9, so i know what i'm talking about.
You could still place the box with display-size/headline a "little" more to the left to compensate this OR be really pedantic and fiddle all 350 pages. Why not? Graphic-Design is some form of art. I propably would do it if they pay enough.

No Beer is left, i'm leaving now

But do you guys see what I mean where that white space becomes more and more of an issue as you scale the font up? The bigger it is, the more you need to tweak it left to line up. In other words, you need the ability to kern or hang left past the normal bounds or inset of the text box.

It's usually easiest for me to therefore do my drop caps in their own text box, and/or to have certain headlines in their own text boxes. Then I merely line things up with guides or mathematically, taking into account where the left edge of the letterform actually is. I usually fly without snap, by the by. Unless it's pretty consistent body text.

quote:

Originally posted by thalo:
But do you guys see what I mean where that white space becomes more and more of an issue as you scale the font up?
The bigger it is, the more you need to tweak it left to line up. In other words, you need the ability to kern or hang left past the normal bounds or inset of the text box.

Thalo, I absolutely understood that. And i think my example of the ways (at least my example) fonts are built and used in common DTP-Apps also proof your thesis.
Also i drop headlines, body text, other Text (i'm again out of english technical terms) in their own text-boxes and then arrange them and correct the position using some guides or use the "place a space before the first char and then use negative kerning", this is just a no-brainer.

yeah, same here, that's what I do.

I know I harp on this all the time, but if you email Adobe, they eventually do listen. For the amount of money we spend on those apps, we should have a say in how they work. So pound them with feedback. This is something we really need, and they could be making our lives easier, instead of worrying about making OS X's life easier.

I mean, why even have a Drop Cap feature, that we can set to whatever line height, if we can't easily align it? That's stuff we really need to complain about. And you know me, I believe in complaining to get things done.

Thalo, is right... we should have positive-negative alignment control of inset and... everything really. This problem shows, glaringingly, that typesetting in the all-powerfull computer age has progressed so far from cold type in some regards.

As an aside, I have gone in and aligned everything in that catalogue I was writing about; manually... 3 hours.... who do I bill? ... Adobe?

Thanks for all the input...

Tri

quote:

As an aside, I have gone in and aligned everything in that catalogue I was writing about; manually... 3 hours.... who do I bill? ... Adobe?

Lol! Anyway 3 hours is quite fast and i'm sure the additional cost will not bother your client when i think about the final costs of producing a 350 page catalog? If you need these 3 hours extratime do they bother - i hope not.

May you should send some feedback & suggestions to Adobe, MAYBE they will implement it some day in the future.

Luckily I didn't need adjust things on all 350 pages... only on the 184 object descriptions, quite a few of which are two-page spreads, so maybe in 120 or so places.

Yes, I will write a feedback and feature request to Adobe. Being able to fine tune text box inset would be a real feather in their cap... which is where it belongs and not in their icons.

I finally got around to asking our Typographer his thoughts on this one. Not sure if there is anything new here but this is what he said:

What he described is the way the fonts are cut allows for the shoulder of other letters. Like the J. If smithz were to also use the J from the same font of the M illustration above the bottom shoulder of the J should be flush 0. The main body of the J will then align with the M. If the M were at 0 and also the main body of the J the shoulder would be cut off the J.

To get the M flush when needed he suggested to put in a space band then kern the M back. If need be you can increase the size of the space band.

This happens in Quark also.

I need a volunteer. Is there anyone out there who will open four small InDesign documents for me and save them in a fashion so that I can open them with InDesign CS1?

I can give it a try from the office. I will not get the files back to you until Friday night.

Plus Indesign works like Quark so will it matter if I don't have all the support files that go along with the Indesign file such as the fonts used or image files etc.

At home I have Indesign 2 the one just before the first CS was launched.

I've got ID CS2 running here, but i am not sure how to export to CS1 ... There is some Indesign-exchange format (.idx), is that the way to go? There is no clear "CS1" mentioned anywhere.

Btw, which Version of ID was used to create these four files? Because CS3 can't be opened in CS2.

All I've got loaded is CS3 right now, not sure that'll help you. The only thing I'd be able to output for you is PDFs.

Thanks for the offers. I was going to do this for a friend, not professionally. But it seems he has found someone else to do the task. But I'll keep all of you in mind for the future. And as far as I know, you can "Export" from InDesign (using the InDesign Interchange file format) and gain backward compatibility that way. I've done it before, but I'm not sure, for instance, if CS3 can reach back to CS1 in this way.

Smithz, I don't know what version was used to create the files. Get Info is not showing me this information. I'll email thalo one of the files just for shits and giggles to see if he can see what version they are. I think this is some stuff for a Democratic politician.