A New Home
If you’re used to www.theindesigner.com automatically taking you InDesignSecrets…surprise! The InDesigner podcast/blog has a new home…or, more accurately, it has returned to its old home.
For nearly a year and a half, I’ve had the pleasure and honor of being part of David Blatner and Anne-Marie Concepcion’s fantastic InDesignSecrets web site as their exclusive video provider and occasional blog poster. As colleagues go, it would be hard to fall into better, more expert company, and I thank David and Anne-Marie for making me a part of the team, and for all of the increased exposure to my videocasts that came with that association. I look forward to continuing to work with both of them, in different ways, going forward, and I encourage all of you to make room in your browser’s Bookmarks bar for both of our sites for the best one-two punch in the InDesign arena.
And yet, the same restless need to venture out on my own and create a podcast in the first place has led me to return to where I started: a site of my own, from which I can continue to distribute my video podcasts and share information, instruction and insight in my own unique way.
For subscribers through iTunes or any other means, nothing whatsoever will change. The feed for the podcast has been the same since the beginning, so there’s nothing to change on your end. Just let the videocasts keep coming to you automatically as they always have.
Speaking of which…I’m a bit overdue for a new episode, so look for that in a few days, and more to come in the days and weeks ahead. In the meantime, welcome. Or rather, welcome back.
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February 1st, 2008 at 12:48 am
Welcome home my friend. I look forward to all your videocasts.
– Cal
February 1st, 2008 at 10:22 am
Cool. Welcome back. I never removed theindesigner.com from my bookmarks, so, woohoo… I have nothing to do! Have fun in Miami!
February 1st, 2008 at 10:23 am
Hi Michael! Just came over to check out the new digs and bring you a plant for your new (old?) home. Mind if I try out the couch? Nice place…
February 1st, 2008 at 10:37 am
The more the merrier, Mordy…but at this rate, I might have to start putting my name on the food in the fridge. 🙂
February 1st, 2008 at 11:24 am
Hi Michael,
Love the site, videos, podcasts etc…
I have a question, hope I’m not spoiling the housewarming party (I could always bring cupcakes!)
I am creating a congratulatory book (200-300pg’s) for people being honored at a charity dinner. I use paragraph styles and love it, but my problem is that I’m having a tough time working out how to make a change within a sentence of the style sheet.
EG:
Congratulations to the Honorees (style called text)
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (style called honoree)
on this well deserved honor (style called text)
Wishing your family cuy kzn (mazel tov in hebrew font) too! (style called text, but I want the hebrew text to change to a different font)
Love,
Mr. and Mrs. Neighbor (style called from)
I never know how many hebrew words there will be (1 word, a sentence, who knows) and it’s also often within a sentence, so nested styles don’t seem to be working for me.
Help!
Thanks so much….
I hope this makes sense!
February 1st, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Shelley —
There’s one way to “trigger” a nested style to start or stop when you’re not certain where, exactly, it will fall in your text, and where exactly it will end. You need to somehow “tag” that text by wrapping some kind of unique identifier around it.
Typically, inserting an End Nested Style Here character is the best way to stop the nested formatting, but for where it starts, you’d need something like a zero-width space or a non-joiner character to act as a trigger. With those in place around the text in question, you can set your nesting up as:
None through 1 non-joiner, then HebrewFontStyle through 1 End Nested Style Here character.It’s a trade-off in efficiency, though, because the insertion of the special characters is work that needs to be done on each instance to make the nesting work. In a perfect world, this layout would be best treated like you would a mail merge, using InDesign’s Data Merge features (see Episode 43), where the “shell” of the sentence is static, but the data placeholder is pre-styled with the character style for your Hebrew font.
February 1st, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Thanks so much for the speedy reply.
I have been playing a little more, and I think having a character style for the hebrew word/s may be the best way to go. I select those few words and nothing else is affected.
Not at automated as I would like… but hey 😉
Thanks a ton!
February 1st, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Great news Michael. It brings more clarity this way.
February 2nd, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Welcome back 🙂
February 3rd, 2008 at 9:33 am
Hey the new digs are looking nice! And not an IKEA tag in sight. 😉
Looking forward to all the cool videos + other goodies you have planned!
AM
February 5th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Hey Michael, fwiw, you can use End Nested Style characters as “start” triggers for Nested styles too. Just specify them in the Nested Style set-up area as usual. They can act as both the start and stop in the same paragraph style, delimiting the text you want the character style applied to.
When I think about it too much my brain turns inside out though. 😉 The Non-Joiner you recommend (only available in CS3) is a better alternative, imo, for these kind of markers.
AM
February 5th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Good point, Anne-Marie. I agree that using something with End in the name as a starting point is an open invitation to confusion, but it’s a perfectly viable alternative provided the mental meltdown can be kept under controlled.
February 5th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Hi Michael,
Love your new crib, so to speak. Just added it to my Bookmarks.
JW
February 6th, 2008 at 6:14 am
Hey Michael — congrats on moving back to your own digs!
Just ordered a copy of Professional Design Techniques with Adobe Creative Suite 3, too. Thanks for helping wrangle us a discount; it offset the painful international shipping.