InDesign for QuarkXPress Users [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Other Character Formatting

As long as the list of character formats which we've already covered is, there are still a few more to add. Several of these are familiar to XPress users: applying horizontal and vertical scaling, color and shade, and baseline shift. Two are new: InDesign lets you skew type, and apply a language attribute. All of these attributes can be included in character and paragraph styles.

Horizontal and Vertical Scaling

Horizontal or vertical scaling artificially compresses or expands characters, distorting their shapes. In QuarkXPress, when you want to apply horizontal or vertical scaling, you choose the command from the Style menu or the Character Attributes dialog box. There you may set either a horizontal or vertical scaling value, but not both.

InDesign allows you to set horizontal and vertical scaling for type independently using controls on the Character palette. There is no keyboard shortcut for horizontal/vertical scaling, as there is in XPress.

Color, Tint, Gradient and Stroke

QuarkXPress gives you the ability to set character color and shade using the Style menu or the Color palette. InDesign provides similar character formatting controls to apply color and shade (InDesign calls it "tint") in the Swatches palette and the Color palette. In addition to applying color to text, InDesign also supports applying a gradient, and stroking text characters. We discuss these features in Part 8,

Color and Transparency .

Baseline Shift

Baseline shift moves characters above or below the baseline, the imaginary line on which your type sits. In XPress, you choose this feature from the Style menu, in the Character Attributes dialog box, or with a keystroke. In InDesign, you choose a value in the Baseline Shift field on the Character palette. Positive values shift characters above the baseline; negative values shift them below the baseline. To baseline shift selected text, either type in a value in points, or click the up/down arrows to increase or decrease the offset value in 1-point increments. You can also use a keyboard shortcut: hold down the Option-Shift/Alt-Shift keys and press the Up or Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease the baseline shift in 2-point increments (you can change this in the Units & Increments Preferences dialog box). Adding the Command/Ctrl key to the keyboard shortcut multiplies the incremental change by five.

Skew

The

skew type style lets you create a false italic effect in a font which lacks that feature (see Figure 44-4). It distorts the characters in the process, similar to the way horizontal or vertical scaling does. You can apply this type style in InDesign by choosing a value in the Skew field on the Character palette. Enter a skew angle in degrees, or click the up/down arrows to increase or decrease the angle in 1-degree increments. Holding down the Shift key while clicking the arrows uses 4-degree increments. A positive angle slants forward; a negative angle slants backward.

Language

You may assign language as a character attribute to text at the bottom of the Character palette. This is useful when you want to check spelling or hyphenate based on another language's dictionary (see Chapter 42).