InDesign for QuarkXPress Users [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Duplicating Objects

QuarkXPress gives us three ways to make copies of its itemscopying and pasting, Duplicate, and Step and Repeat. InDesign can do all this, of course, plus it has a few more options hidden up its sleeve.

Copying and Pasting

You can cut, copy, and paste objects in InDesign with the Selection, Direct Selection and Type tools. Like XPress, when choosing Paste from the Edit menu (or pressing Command-V/Ctrl-V), InDesign pastes the object in the center of the current page or spread. And, as with QuarkXPress, you may need to be careful about which page the object is copied to. InDesign places the object on the

targeted spreadthe one whose number is highlighted in the Pages palette and displayed in the lower-left corner of the document windownot necessarily the page that is visible on screen.

If you select a graphic (the content) in a graphics frame with the Direct Selection tool and copy it, pasting with either the Selection or Direct Selection tool automatically creates a new frame in the middle of the page or spread. This can drive XPress users mad because if they select another frame and choose Paste, they expect the graphic to be pasted into it. Not so in InDesign. Here, you must choose Paste Into (Command-Option-V/Ctrl-Alt-V) if you want the graphic to end up inside a selected frame.

If you select some text from a text frame with the Type tool and copy it, what happens when you paste depends on the tool you have selected. As you'd expect, if you have an insertion point in a text frame, the text is pasted there. However, if you have the Selection or Direct Selection tool selected (there is no text insertion point), InDesign creates a new text frame in the center of the targeted page or spread and pastes the text into it.

Finally, if you select a

part of a path (one or more segments or points) with the Direct Selection tool and copy it to the Clipboard, pasting creates a duplicate of the partial path (including any fill or stroke attributes) in the center of the current page or spread.

Paste in Place

InDesign also offers an extra Paste command, already familiar to PageMaker users: Paste in Place. This is handy when you want to copy objects to other pages. Choose the objects you want to duplicate, and copy as usual. Then jump to the page or spread where you want the copy and choose Paste in Place from the Edit menu (or press Command-Option-Shift-V/Ctrl-Alt-Shift-V). The objects are pasted in the same X/Y position on the spread. The only thing tricky about this command is that if you're using facing pages, it always copies to the same page on the spread. That is, you can't copy from a left-hand page and then paste in place on a right-hand page; the object will end up on the left-hand page.

Duplicating and Step-and-Repeating

InDesign's Duplicate and Step and Repeat commands (in the Edit menu) are almost exactly like the features of the same name in XPress, though the default keyboard shortcuts are different: Command-Option-Shift-D/Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D duplicates any selected object down and to the right of the original object. Unlike QuarkXPress, which bases the offset on the last-used Step and Repeat setting, in InDesign the amount of Duplicate offset changes, depending on screen magnification.

To duplicate with precise offsets, press Command-Shift-V/Ctrl-Shift-V) to open the Step and Repeat dialog box (see Figure 21-1). Like XPress, this feature lets you set the number of copies and the horizontal and vertical offset.

Option/Alt-Dragging

Steve and Christopher's favorite method of duplicating is a feature borrowed from Illustrator and Photoshop, and involves holding down the Option/Alt key. Whenever you want to make a copy of something, you can hold down the Option/Alt key and drag with the Selection or Direct Selection tool to make a duplicate. If you have some other tool selected, then Command-Option/Ctrl-Alt-drag. A double-arrow cursor appears when dragging, indicating the duplication. Be sure to release the mouse button before releasing the Option/Alt key.

David says he hates this method because most of the time he wants that shortcut to be a grabber hand. (The Option/Alt key

is a grabber hand when the cursor is blinking in a text frame.)

Copying While Transforming

The last method for copying objects is to make copies when transforming an object, which can be done when transforming either interactively (dragging) or precisely (in a dialog box). When you want to copy an object while dragging with the Scale, Rotate, or Skew tools, add the Option/Alt key modifierthe original object is left unchanged and the transformation is applied to the copy. However, you must press down the key

after you start dragging. If you press before, you're using the key to set the transformation point instead.

If you use the Move, Scale, Rotate, or Skew dialog boxes (see Chapters 17 and 18), you can click the Copy button to apply the transformation to a duplicate, leaving the original unchanged.

Unfortunately, InDesign doesn't have Illustrator's Repeat Transform command to make extra copies once one of these transformations hasbeen performed. Oh well; maybe in the next version.