The Adobe® InCopy® CS2 Book [Electronic resources]

Customizing Galley & Story Appearance

With multiple writers and editors contributing to this book, it's become apparent that we all think differently. These differences are really obvious when you compare how each of us has configured our Galley & Story Appearance settings. Considering how much time you'll spend staring at text on your screen, it's a good thing that InCopy gives you lots of ways to customize your editing environment.

The Galley & Story Appearance Toolbar

The Galley & Story Appearance toolbar, in the bottom-left corner of the screen, includes five tools for customizing the appearance of text in Galley and Story views (Figure 1.16). Although it may seem obvious, remember that these options affect only Galley and Story views. In Layout view, text formatting is controlled by the character and paragraph formatting in the document, and the layout is determined by the corresponding InDesign layout or the document settings in InCopy.

On the far left of the toolbar is the display Chapter 3) in the left column of the document window. We find the visibility of paragraph styles to be very helpful, and since turning them off doesn't save any space, we recommend leaving this option turned on.

Tip

If you want to disable the entire information column on the left, choose View >Hide Info Column.

Galley & Story Appearance Preferences

The ability to control options such as font and line spacing is helpful, but some of the coolest options are found in the application preferences. Choose InCopy > Preferences > Galley & Story Display (Mac) or Edit > Preferences > Galley & Story Display (Windows) to access a few advanced controls (Figure 1.18). If most of your work involves writing and editing text, then you know how hard it is on your eyes to stare at black text on a white background all day. To lighten your visual load, you can adjust the colors of the text and background for a more pleasing work environment. Choose Amber Monochrome or Terminal from the Theme pull-down menu and you'll probably chuckle at the retro effect, but your tired eyes will thank you.

Among these preferences is the option to change the appearance of the cursor to one of four different styles (Figure 1.19). You can even make it blink, blink, blink. Although these options might seem minor, anyone who spends a lot of time working with type will appreciate the variety that InCopy offers.