InDesign for QuarkXPress Users [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Creating Path Type

To create path type in QuarkXPress, you use one of the four tools dedicated to that function or you convert a text box into a text path. InDesign works a bit differently. It doesn't use specialized tools to create the path: Instead, you can use any of the path creation and editing tools which we describe in Chapter 12. You can create path type on any open or closed path (but not compound paths). InDesign can't convert shapes to paths.

When you want to change a regular path into a text path, choose the Path Type tool, normally hidden under the Type tool (or press Shift-T). Then move the cursor over the path until you see a small + cursor. This indicates that if you click, or if you click and drag, you'll turn an ordinary path into a path type text frame (see Figure 73-1).

Clicking or Clicking-and-Dragging

If you click with the Path Type tool on an open path, an insertion point appears at the start of the path by default. (If the current default paragraph settings are not flush left or if they include an indent, the cursor may appear somewhere else on the path.) When you type or paste text, the text can extend the full length of the path. If you click on a closed path (like an oval), InDesign places the insertion point exactly where you clicked.

If you click and drag with the Path Type tool along the path instead, you determine where the text begins and ends on the path (you can't do this in XPress). Where you start dragging, a

start handle appears, and as you're dragging an

end handle moves along the path, indicating the end of the text (see Figure 73-2). After dragging to indicate where the text will go, type or paste text on the path.

At the center of the path text, a small vertical

center handle also appears. In addition, because path type works like a single-line text frame, you also see an in port and out port which can be used for threading the text to or from another text path or a regular text frame.

Path Type Controls

QuarkXPress offers several options for styling text on a path in the Modify dialog box. InDesign has similar path type controls in the Path Type Options dialog box, which you may open in one of three ways (see Figure 73-3). The easiest method is to double-click the Path Type tool. You can also select Options from the Type on a Path submenu (under the Type menu), or you can use the context menu when path type is selected.

QuarkXPress offers four styles of path type which vary how the text is oriented to the line; XPress's styles don't have names, only icons and buttons in the Modify dialog box. InDesign offers five similar Effects (see Figure 73-4):

• Rainbow. This is the default style, and it corresponds to XPress's default style in which characters follow the path, rotating along the curve.




• Skew. This effect rotates the characters along the curve, then skews them so they remains upright.




• 3D Ribbon. This skews the characters, but doesn't rotate them.




• Stair Step. Here, the characters are neither rotated nor skewed.




• Gravity. Not available in XPress, this strange effect keeps the bottom of the characters' baseline on the path while keeping each vertical edge in line with the path's center point.

As in QuarkXPress, you can align the text to the path based on the text's baseline, center, ascender or descender. You can also adjust to the path's top, center or bottom. There is a Flip checkbox like in XPress which allows you to flip the type you've created across the path. (Unlike XPress, you can also use the Selection or Direct Selection tool to drag the center handle of path type across the path to flip it.)

The Spacing control lets you compensate for the fact that characters spread out when they are over a tight curve (XPress can't do this). By entering a positive value, InDesign removes extra space from characters near a curve, but leaves the spacing of those on straight segments unchanged.