Prior to InDesign CS3, repeating a sequence of style changes within a paragraph meant setting up those steps multiple times. Every style, range, and delimiter op-tion had to be added one by one in the rather small work area of the dialog. Th is made things particularly diffi cult if the number of required repetitions was uncer-tain. You would need to add more loops than might be needed in the longest-case scenario to ensure that the style would not “run out” of nesting instructions.
In CS3 and later, a sequence only needs to be set up once, and then followed by an instruction of “[Repeat] last 2 Styles” (or whatever the appropriate number for your purposes would be). InDesign continues to apply those styles over and over until it either runs out of matching criteria or reaches the end of the paragraph.
In FIGURE 2.19, the track numbers and names for a CD label run in one continu-ous paragraph rather than on separate lines. Each song title is preceded by the track number, which is formatted with a Track Numbers character style that uses a custom underline. Punctuation Spaces on either side of the track number
FIGURE 2.18 Style changes triggered by multiple delimiters.
TIP
Multiple delimiters are similar to the logic going on behind the scenes when Sentences is chosen from the delimiter menu. A sen-tence is anything that ends in a period, question mark, or exclamation point, but InDesign is smart enough to know that closing quotation marks are considered part of a sentence, even though they appear after the ending punctuation mark. That’s beyond the scope of any trigger you could set with a range of characters in the delimiter field.
serve two purposes: Th ey complete the “boxed” eff ect around the numbers, and they serve as delimiters to trigger the change between the Track Numbers char-acter style and the default paragraph style used for the song titles.
Character Styles Used:
Paragraph Styles Used:
Th e sequence is Track Numbers through 2 Punctuation Spaces (^ .), and then [None] (meaning the paragraph style with no changes) up to 1 Punctuation Space. Th e last setting is to repeat those last 2 styles, which handles the format-ting for every remaining number and song title in the paragraph.
Nested Line Styles
A common typographic treatment in books and magazines is to use a particular style through the fi rst few lines of text in a chapter or an article. Maintaining this formatting throughout the design process—while text is still being revised and column widths are subject to change—can be a chore. Nested style changes are triggered by specifi c characters. Since a line is not a character, criteria such as “through 3 lines” are not available via regular nesting. InDesign CS4 remedied that shortcoming with the addition of Nested Line Styles, which dynamically maintain a particular nested style through a specifi ed number of lines (e.g., All Caps for 3 lines). As lines rewrap due to text edits or column width resizing, the nested line style automatically adapts to those changes (FIGURE 2.20).
Nested Line Styles work seamlessly in combination with Nested Styles, Drop Caps, and GREP styles, which can all exist within the same paragraph (FIGURE 2.21) provided they do not confl ict with one another (see the sidebar
“When Styles Collide”).
FIGURE 2.19 Continuously looping style changes within a single paragraph using the [Repeat] option.
ADOBE INDESIGN CS4 STYLES How to Create Better, Faster Text and Layouts 55
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T WAS IN WARWICK CASTLE THAT I CAME ACROSS THE CURIOUS STRANGER WHOM I AM GOING TO TALK ABOUT. HE ATTRACTED ME BY THREE THINGS: HIS CANDID SIMPLICITY, HIS MARVELOUS FAMILIARITY WITH ANCIENT ARMOR, AND THE RESTFULNESS OF HIS COMpany—for he did all the talking. We fell together, as modest people will, in the tail of the herd that was being shown through, and he at once began to say things which interested me. As he talked along, softly, pleasantly, flowingly, he seemed to drift away imperceptibly out of this world and time, and into some remote era and old forgotten country; and so he gradually wove such a spell about me that I seemed to move among the
I
T WAS IN WARWICK CASTLE THAT I CAME ACROSS THE CURIOUS STRANGER WHOM I AM GOING TO TALK ABOUT. HE ATTRACTED ME BY THREE THINGS:his candid simplicity, his marvelous familiarity with ancient armor, and the restfulness of his company—for he did all the talking. We fell together, as modest people will, in the tail of the herd that was being shown through, and he at once began to say things which interested me. As he talked along, softly, pleasantly, flowingly, he seemed to drift away imperceptibly out of this world and time, and into some remote era and old forgotten country; and
I
T WAS IN WARWICK CASTLE THAT I CAME ACROSS THE CURIOUS STRANGER WHOM I am going to talk about. He attracted me by three things:his candid simplicity, his marvelous familiarity with ancient armor, and the restfulness of his company—for he did all the talking. We fell together, as mod-est people will, in the tail of the herd that
Setting up a nested line style is essentially the same as setting up a regular nested style. In the Nested Line Styles work area, select a character style to span a given number of lines. You can also set up multiple nested line styles in a spe-cifi c sequence and repeat line styles just as you can with nested styles. For ex-ample, to alternate the formatting of every other line in a paragraph, set a style through 1 line, then another style through 1 line, and then repeat the last 2 lines with the [Repeat] option (FIGURE 2.22).
FIGURE 2.20 A nested line style through three lines adapts to any column width.
FIGURE 2.21 Drop Caps, Nested Styles, and Nested Line Styles can be applied simultaneously to a single paragraph.
I’m not quite sure why anyone would deliberately choose this kind of line style. It seems like a cruel trick to play on the reader, but this is an example of what you can do with multiple nested line styles using the Repeat option.
When Styles Collide
With lots of automatic formatting at work, there could be instances where the different settings for GREP styles, Nested Styles, and Nested Line Styles conflict with one another in a paragraph. You can set a drop cap to use a particular character style and span a certain number of letters and lines, and then set a nested style through the first word, add a nested line style through a given number of lines, and include a GREP style to handle text that matches a particular pattern. All these styles are designed to co-exist. If there are no clashes among the character styles, all styles will be applied properly. In other words, if a bold character style and an all caps character style overlap one another, both styles will be applied. The text will be both bold and set in all caps.
If, however, a nested style calls for all caps and a nested line style calls for small caps, or a GREP style calls for blue text and a nested style calls for red text, those are conflicts. To resolve these contradictory settings, InDe-sign follows a specific order for which styles it will honor first. GREP styles get top priority, Nested Style settings are obeyed next, and Nested Line Styles are applied last (or ignored first, depending on how you choose to look at it).