InDesign for QuarkXPress Users [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Alignment and Spacing

Some alignment and spacing choices are tied to the text frame. These include inset spacing, first baseline, and vertical alignment; we discuss these in Chapter 50. For now, we'll discuss how to control space within and around paragraphs.

The control center for paragraph alignment in InDesign is the Paragraph palette (see Figure 45-1). If the Paragraph palette isn't open, you can choose Paragraph from the Type menu (or press Command-M/Ctrl-M, which also selects the Left Indent field in the palette). To see all the palette's choices, choose Show Options from the palette menu.

Leading

If you're expecting us to talk about leading as a paragraph attribute here, you're looking in the wrong place! InDesign, by default, considers leading to be a character attribute, although you can make it apply to an entire paragraph (see Chapter 44).

Horizontal Alignment

Five of the seven horizontal alignment buttons in InDesign's Paragraph palette duplicate the alignments in XPress. The last two offer new options: setting the last line of justified text center aligned or right aligned. We usually use the keystrokes we know from QuarkXPress: You can hold down the Command-Shift/Ctrl-Shift keys, and press L for left, C for center, R for right, J for justified (last line aligned left). The only difference is the shortcut for force justifying all lines: Command-Shift-F/Ctrl-Shift-F.

Left and Right Indents

InDesign shares the same basic paragraph indent commands as QuarkXPressleft indent, right indent, and first line indenteach of which you can set in InDesign's Paragraph or Tabs palettes.

By default, indent values are displayed in the units shown on the horizontal ruler, but you may use any measurement units InDesign supports: Type

i, in , or

" for inches,

pt for points,

p for picas,

mm for millimeters,

cm for centimeters, or

c for ciceros. If you're typing in a number, press Tab or Enter to make the indent take effect. You can also press the arrow buttons or the Up/Down Arrow keys to nudge the amount smaller or larger; the increments are bigger if you press the Shift key.

We'll discuss different methods of creating hanging indents when we talk about hung punctuation in Chapter 47.

If you like working interactively rather than numerically, you can set your indents on InDesign's Tabs palette (see Chapter 48; here we'll just discuss its indent features. Use one of these methods to position indents:

• Drag the top marker on the left side to indent the first line. Drag the bottom marker on the left to move both left markers and set the left indent for the paragraph. Drag the right marker to set the right indent. As you move these markers, InDesign displays their numeric position in the Position (X) field.




• Click on one of the indent markers to select it, type an indent value in the Position (X) field, then press Enter.

Space Before and After

Both XPress and InDesign let you set space before and after paragraphs. In InDesign you can use the Paragraph palette's Space Before and Space After fields. Either type a value into the fields and press Enter, place the cursor in one of these fields and press the Up/Down Arrow keys, or click the up/down arrows next to the field. As in XPress, Space Before has no effect at the top of a column of text and Space After has no effect at the bottom of a column of text.

Baseline Grid

InDesign supports using a document-wide baseline grid to align paragraphs, just as QuarkXPress does. We rarely uses baseline grids because we think that you can get the same qualityand more flexibilitywith careful use of leading and the Space Before/Space After values.

However, should you wish to use this feature, the settings which control the baseline grid are in the Grids Preferences dialog box (see Chapter 7). There you'll find choices for the grid color, start value, and increment, which normally should match the document's leading. While XPress has all those, InDesign adds a twist: You can set a View Threshold value. For example, if you set this to 100%, the baseline grid is invisible at magnifications lower than 100%, but appears when you are zoomed in.

If you want to anchor a paragraph to the baseline grid, click the Align to Baseline Grid icon on the Paragraph palette (or press Command-Option-Shift-G/Ctrl-Alt-Shift-G to turn it on or off). To remove the anchoring, click the Do Not Align to Baseline Grid icon. You can display or hide the baseline grid from the View menu or by pressing Command-Option-'/Ctrl-Alt-' (quote mark).

Note that InDesign also includes a secret, hidden baseline alignment feature (which XPress does not have): You can align just the first baseline of a paragraph to the grid. Open the keyboard shortcuts editor (see Chapter 6), select Text and Tables from the Product area popup menu, and scroll down the feature list until you see Only Align First Line to Grid. Assign a shortcut to this, and then you can use it on any paragraph for which Align to Baseline Grid is turned on.