Ottawa InDesign User Group

Meeting Summary

InDesign Text Controls and Styles
Mon, Jul 7th, 2008 at 7:00 PM
Adobe Systems Canada

Event Details

Thanks to all who came out to our summer session! We saw many new faces, thanks to the InDesign Boot Camp. We also made the group work for their prizes for the first time by asking questions instead of the usual boring draw! We were impressed by the knowledge of attendees. The User Group was treated to an introduction to styles and text controls by Adobe InDesign guru Sebastian Distefano. Topics included:

• Object Styles and Text
• Text Styles and formatting
• Paragraph Styles
• Apply Next Style command
• Nested Styles

Eliquo's Director of Training, Michael Cooper, also presented on CS3's new GREP Find/Replace command, and showed us how to increase formatting productivity using Quick Apply. See the Resources section below for the GREP search tutorial that Michael used at the meeting.

Resources
GREP
You can download the GREP search tutorial Michael presented at this meeting. The .zip file contains all the instructions and sample files you need to get your feet wet with GREP: www.eliquo.ca/indesign/GREP-Searches.zip (675k)

LINKS
Eliquo’s list of InDesign courses: http://eliquo.ca/courses/adobe/adobe_indesign.php

Adobe’s InDesign page: http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/

The official Acrobat User Community website: http://www.acrobatusers.com/

Archives
As promised, here is the list of our production designers’ most useful InDesign shortcuts, as demonstrated at the last user group meeting:
http://eliquo.ca/indesign/shortcuts.php

Also, please take a few minutes to visit Tim Cole’s blog, where he profiles InDesign expert Casey D’Andrea and his case for customizing shortcuts. Whether you’ve never used a shortcut key in your life or you hardly ever touch your mouse, you will find this article and accompanying sample files interesting and useful:
http://blogs.adobe.com/indesignchannel/2007/10/celebrity_keyboard_shortcuts_c_1.html.

By popular demand, here is the download of Michael’s "Actual Size" scripting procedure that allows you to set a keyboard shortcut to make your size on screen match the exact size of your printed documents. The instructions are for Mac and PC:
http://www.eliquo.ca/indesign/ID_Actual_Size.zip (500k)