Texts

Formatting texts in Adobe InDesign: key points

The Wedia system heavily relies on Paragraph and Character styles to control the styling options given to the end user. Font, font-size, color rules overrides can be defined since version 2023.1, but it is good practice to first create a great Styles set to streamline text formatting rules.

For each paragraph, text formatting (using paragraph & character styles) must follow this logic:

• text must be ruled by a paragraph style,

• extras have to be handled with character styles (in addition for the variations of the text).

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Clearing overrides in a paragraph style

If a style has been accidentally overridden, the symbol “+” will appear next to its name, like shown in the following screenshot.

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Figure 1. Example of override in a paragraph style, in Adobe InDesign

To apply the original parameter of the style, select your paragraph and make a click on the style name (in the Paragraph Style or Character Style palette) pressing simultaneously Alt (for PC) or Option/Alt (for Mac). The symbol “+” will disappear. It is not recommended to upload file with overrides.

Styles name convention

When creating a new style, please follow the convention name:

• never use accented characters

• never use special characters

• never use the symbols < or >

• never insert spaces; replace them with underscores ("_")

• never start a name with a number

• the name should be short and explicit

• make a preference for lowercase

Styles: authorised and forbidden effects

Style based on another style

You can base a new style on another existing style, for example, base the paragraph style align_right on the paragraph style align_left, and only change the alignment in the paragraph.

This behaviour is authorized for files prepared for Wedia.

Next Style

When creating a style, you can define the "next style" to apply: for example, you create the style title, and you select the style subtitle to be the next style. Doing this, any time you will be using the style title: when you make a line break (pressing Enter), your desktop-publishing software will automatically apply the next style like configured, in our example: subtitle.

The "Next styles" function is supported by Wedia.

Indents, first/last line indents, spaces before/after

Indents, first/last line indents, spaces before/after are totally compatible with the platform.

You can use them with no restriction.

Tabs

Tabs are allowed in your documents. All alignment and leaders are accepted.

Paragraph rules

Paragraph rules in paragraph styles are allowed in your documents. The server will compose them with no difficulty.

GREP styles

Since the CS4 release, Adobe InDesign allows a new style in paragraph styles named “GREP Style”. These are conditional styles, which can, for example, apply automatically a specific character style to all numbers or to tabs. Currently, GREP styles are not supported by Wedia.

Alignment on a grid

In each document, you can define the baseline grid which will align all your texts. This grid is essential for example to align texts in columns with a picture in the middle wrapping the text, like exposed in the screenshots below.

We strongly recommend to define a baseline grid in your document and to align your styles on this grid.

On the left, the text is not aligned on the grid. The picture wraps the text and changes the alignment of the texts in the colums 2, 3 and 4 (sentences are not horizontally aligned anymore). On the right example, the text is aligned on the grid, so all sentences are kept aligned despite the text wrap of the picture.

Drop caps

You can apply drop-caps in you paragraph style or character style, it will be correctly composed by the server of the platform.

Nested styles

In Adobe InDesign you can create nested styles, to apply specific styles to some words in your paragraph. For example, to have the first words of your paragraph in orange, you just have to create a nested style applying the character style "text_orange" you would have created.

Bullets and numbers

You can use bullets and numbers in your paragraph styles; you can select symbols and apply character styles on them.

The use of bullets and numbers in paragraph styles is compatible with the platform.

Character color

General points

There is no restriction in applying colors in your paragraph or character styles. Remind to avoid colors in four-color process for texts with a size below 6pt, as it could create plate mounting issues for your printer.

Tint of colors/swatches

You must only use colors with a 100% tint. If you need to use a tint (for example, {C 100% - M 50%} with 50% of tint), you should create a correspondency in a new color swatch with 100% of tint (e.g. {C 50% - M 25%} with 100% of tint): this is a good practice, not a limitation of Wedia.

“Registration” color

It is strictly forbidden to apply the "registration" color in your paragraph and character styles.

OpenType features

OpenType fonts offer several font-effects, such as ligatures, numbers styles… like exposed in the following screenshot.

There are no restriction in using OpenType features in your paragraph and character styles for documents prepared for Wedia.

Style group (folders)

Since CS3 release, you can group your styles in folders, from the “Styles” palette. be careful when using groups. In order to simplify the document, please only create one level of arborescence of groups. Also, do not forget to name your group with no accented characters, no special characters and no spaces. Then, we recommend you to always test the feature beforehand in preproduction.

Automatic numbering

We do not advise the use of automatic numbering in files aimed to be handled by the platform. Indeed, the pages can be moved, deleted or inserted in another file, which might fool the automatic numbering.

Scaling text

Resizing a text frame with a scaling factor will resize also the text size. The original text-size remains in the paragraph or character style but the text is displayed with the scaling factor. We recommend you to avoid such text scaling to keep a graphical consistency.

Text Variables

Desktop-publishing softwares allow you to insert text variable, such as text treatment software do, to insert automatically, for example, the date of creation or the name of the file.

Type on a path

Such frame are special as their text follows a vectorial line path (bezier curve).

The use of type on a path is compatible with Wedia.

Columns, margins, vertical justification

Several parameters can be applied to text frames:

• columns in a frame, with gutter with variable width

• inset spacing

• vertical alignment (top, center, bottom or justify)

These three features are compatibles with Wedia.

Text threads

In desktop-publishing software, you can thread text on several frames, as shown in the following screenshot.

You can use text threads in your document. But note that when the final user will edit a text frame with text threads, he will show the text in its integrality. A too long text could be hard to handle in such a case: for usability reasons, we recommend not to exceed four pages of text threads. Beyond four pages, you should split the frames according to the method described in the chapter Preparing a source file.

Tagged frames

To generate automatic layouts from a database, desktop-publishing softwares have been allowing the uploading and processing of structured & tagged datas for many years. This data structure has different origins: files tagged with InDesign Tags, HTML, XML or more recently IDML for InDesign.

It is strictly forbidden to upload a file to Wedia with tagged frames, because it will generate major problems, as Wedia use also the tagging feature, and might collide/overwrite with other tagging schemes.

In InDesign, you can display the tagged contents through View > Structure > Show structure. From this tab, you will be able to delete quickly all tags of the documents.

Hyphenation & Justification

The document you are laying out is supposed to become a template on the platform, which your "final users" will use to create their projects, and edit in full autonomy, without the help of a desktop-publishing team. In this objective, we would like to raise your attention on the justification and hyphenation features: on the one hand, because they are entirely compatible with the platfom, and in the other hand because such features play an essential role in the text composition.

The default hyphenation and justification parameters of your desktop-publishing software are often configured for documents written in english. Depending on the font you are using, the size of your columns and the language in which your document will be written, we recommend you to make some tests to optimise the hyphenation and justification, to find the right "typographic color" (the grey value, or density, of mass of type on the page) and avoid "gutter effects".

In the example above, on the left side, you can see a text frame with default parameters of hyphenation and justification of Adobe InDesign. On the right side, the same frame has a justification customized according to the font and the width of the column.
On the left side, you can notice the second paragraph has not the same typographic color than the previous or the following ones: the word spacing is bigger in the second paragraph. On the right example, with personalized justification, the typographic color is optimized. This is even more visible when you have several columns (see after).

Bluring the text (like when almost closing your eyes), you can see the gutters effect than the spaces create when the typographic color is not optimized. They are highlighted in yellow in the 3rd line. As you can see, they are a lot on the left side (default justification parameters), and a few on the right side (customized justification parameters).

Take time to customize your hyphenation and justification parameters: you will use them regulary and they will guarantee perfect results on the platform.

Anchors

In your layout, you can insert “anchors” to make internal hyperlinks. This feature is generally used to insert table of contents, or to create interactive links when exporting in PDF. We do not recommend the use of anchors in you documents uploaded to the platform, because any change in the text through the platform will delete you anchor automatically.

Hyperlinks

In InDesign, you can associate hyperlinks to texts or images, to create an interactive PDF of your document. Hyperlinks are correctly handled by the platform.

Index

The same way we don’t recommend the use of anchors, we do not recommend the use of the automatic index function, with the definition of index entries. Wedia does not currently have functions to create index entries in its web interface.

Overset text

Even it is not a problem to upload to the platform a file having texts in overset, we do not recommend you to do so, as it will confuse final users.