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• • August 30, 2017 at 4:00 pm #97130
    Johanna Charpentier

    Member

    Hello, I’ve got another issue with typesetting a Bible of 1000+ pages.
    The issue is of finding a balance between aligning our text to the grid, and still meeting some paragraph rules so that Chapter title and title description stays together, with at least 2 of the first chapter verses.

    I aligned the text to the baseline and set it to 11,25 pt, the same size as my text leading. Everything works fine until the aligning gets in conflict with my paragraph rules. Then I tried to justify my bloc of text, and it would be fine if InDesign would equally increase the leading across the 2 columns of a page, instead of only 1 column. Another thing I’m looking for, is the 2 justified columns to line up.

    Here is a screenshot of the right page which is perfect, and the left page is justified:
    https://bibleostervald.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Baseline-and-justification-2.jpg

    I really feel in a dead end here, I hope someone with more experience could kindly help me out ?

  • August 30, 2017 at 8:50 pm #97142
    Johanna Charpentier

    Member

    I wanted to also specify that all my text boxes are set to justify, and my text for verses are set to align to grid. I only need to justify some part of text so that all the columns end at the same point instead of leaving whites lines til the next chapter starts on the next page.

    I tried setting my text on a single bloc of text divided into 2 columns with a gutter, and also 2 seperate blocs of text per page. To see if that would change the way InDesign spreads text when having to justify it. Since I hacent found a way to have everything always to line up perfectly across all pages, I thought if it could at least line up within a same page that would be a progess.

    I hope these infos help to see where I’m coming from.

  • August 30, 2017 at 11:17 pm #97146
    Joel Wilcox

    Member

    Hi Johanna,

    I often deal with typesetting on large books (up to and including a grotesquely large Bible Dictionary I specced out), so I’m familiar with this problem. The first thing I’d recommend is based on your picture: It looks like your baseline grid is set to start at the top of the page. Have you tried setting it to start at the top margin? This makes baseline grid use much easier.

    Honestly, I’ve run into so many problems with vertical justification that I avoid it at all costs. Here’s what I’d recommend instead:

    * Set every text style to align to grid (or the parent text style, assuming you’re basing your styles NOT on the [default paragraph] style).
    * Any style you would like to NOT align to the grid should be individually set to break the above rule.
    * Any style you need to shift up or down can be modified using the Advanced Character Formats > Baseline shift. I usually raise this by a few points to set off text from the grid. This works for character styles or specific overrides as well.
    * To make sure all styles obey the rules, try to keep your margins set so that your baseline grid aligns perfectly with the text frame size. I have a spreadsheet of math I use to do all this calculation (I’m terrible at doing it in my head)

    For example, my publishing house prefers a nice airy 15 pt leading. In a 6×9 inch book, that means 432×648 pt page size, which divided by 15 is a line count of 43.2. Not great for justification. To fix this, I set the top margin and bottom margin to create a text block evenly divisible by 15, which in my case resulted in some weird margin sizes in *inches* but great margin sizes in *points*. (I hate imperial units. Go metric!)

    • August 31, 2017 at 4:22 am #97151
      Johanna Charpentier

      Member

      Hi Joel,

      Thank you so much for your detailed answer.
      I’ll try everything you said to have a more professional look and maybe avoid other issues (I didnt know at all about character styles and the baseline shift option).

      Although as I’m reading I’m wondering how that will help with the source of my problem, which is my paragraph keeping rules. The title that says “CHAPTER 2” is set to stay with all lines of the smaller text below it (which is description of the chapter). And this description has for rule to stay with at least the 2 first verses. So on the left page of my screenshot, you can see what sort of problem that creates. If I turn off justification of the text bloc, the CHAPTER 1 will end short of several lines, with the columns uneven.
      This problem occurs in about 5% of pages in my book.

      I have a Bible in my hands as exemple which has the same system of chapter title and description, and never across this Bible I’ve seen any block of text fall short because of paragraph rules. I have no clue how they’ve done it (and even if they were using ID). I didnt notice either any page where the text isnt aligned to the grid.

      If there is a way to get everything to look perfect, that’d be great. But if not, I have to find a way to try to limit the damages by at least having the justified text to align across the 2 columns of the page.

    • August 31, 2017 at 10:17 am #97159
      Joel Wilcox

      Member

      Ah, I understand now. Sorry for my confusion.

      Keep in mind some of my advice could be very dangerous in a book this large, so I’d suggest saving one to two books of the Pentateuch as a sample to work with. My biggest recommendation (and least destructive) would be to set up a style for the last few verses of a chapter, then set up specific character and word spacing rules that fix the problem. Changes to a single verse are too noticeable, but changes to, say, the last three verses can save your skin here.

      I think applying manual overrides on 5% of a 1000+ page book is too much work, so what I’d recommend is:
      1. SAVE A COPY of just a sample of the book. Any of the books of Moses are long enough to give examples of what you’d risk as you try to fix them. You absolutely do not want to mess with the book as a whole.
      2. From there, see if you can find a pattern for the offending pages. It looks like your problem is related to spreads where the facing page begins a chapter. Trouble is this rarely happens (usually chapters start mid-page without a problem).
      3. You’ll likely have a specific number of lines missing from the non-matching columns. This may mean any even number, any odd number, or 1-3 lines (the number I find most common). The most common numbers indicate what you’ll need to target in the styles you would create to fix the problem.
      4. Adjust a few different style options to see what matches for each offending number. Usually you’ll have a common number to work with, and your advantage here is that Bible verses are usually quite short. Your disadvantage is it looks like you have each verse starting on a new line, which creates some huge problems now.

      Sorry that last step is not really a “step” but it’s hard to know without actually having files to mess with. I think a big part of your problem could be a result of unexpected things like your line justify settings (why do your lines have a ragged left margin?) and the math of your baseline grid (11.25 is a difficult number to work with). Not that you can change that, but clearly this is a difficult project.

      The good thing is as long as you have this occurring only 5% of the time, that’s 50/1000 pages you’ll have to fix. It’s not as bad as it could be (small consolation) but the offending short pages may be fixable only by setting up specific style rules I can’t look into myself: anything from text styles, to object styles, to case-specific overrides. The best thing I can say is that by creating styles that fix the common errors, you can fix 95% of that 5%.

      Sorry for not totally answering your question the first time. I hope this helps more.

    • August 31, 2017 at 5:00 pm #97179
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      I always set my baseline grid for where I want my first text line to start.

  • August 31, 2017 at 3:28 pm #97174
    Dwayne Harris

    Member

    If you only want the text columns on page 62 to align exactly (and don’t care about alignment with page 63 (except for top and bottom):

    1) delete the 2nd column box on page 62. It looks like you have separate text boxes for both columns.

    2) Drag column one over so it’s a single column box.

    3) Select text frame options. Select justified and balance columns. You must check balance columns.

    The text should reflow back and you should be all set. The text in both columns will justify/feather the same.

    Unless I’m misunderstanding something.

  • September 1, 2017 at 8:36 am #97193
    Johanna Charpentier

    Member

    Thank you so much Joel and Dwayne, I am very grateful for both your help.
    I’m currently testing out your ideas, to see what will work best for me.
    After I’m done with trials, I’ll let you know with another post what worked best (in case that would help someone else in a similar situation). Thanks again.

    • September 1, 2017 at 4:44 pm #97505
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      Good luck, Johanna.

      I do think my solution may work for what you want. It’s quick and dirty.

  • September 4, 2017 at 10:01 am #97720
    Johanna Charpentier

    Member

    So I’m pretty much done with testing to solve my issue.

    I tried different settings, for 2 different results:

    1. All text is aligned: I obtained this by creating a new paragraph style with different justification settings (higher word and letter spacing, and glyph scaling) which I applied to a whole page or a few verses on 7% of the pages (100 pages in total) falling short of text because of the Keep options (keeping the chapter titles with its description + 2 verses).

    https://bibleostervald.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Capture.jpg

    I got this result whether I forced all lines to align to the grid within the paragraph styles settings, or whether I didn’t force anything to snap to the grid but the 1st verse of each chapter. I calculated the margins size accordingly, so that the text frames were an exact multiple of the baseline grid.

    2. 93% of the text is aligned, and 7% is justified : I got this by having all my text boxes set to “Justify” in the text frame options. Most of the text aligned, except the same 7% of pages as case 1, which got justified. The result is random: if the number of lines is equal in both columns, the text will align, if not it wont.

    In conclusion, after all this testing I havent found a perfect solution. The cost of having ALL text to align is high: 130 pages to adjust in order to fix columns not fully filling the text bloc (and the difference of text justification is very noticeable), and widows created because I can’t have proper keep options without creating significantly more problems. Plus I havent found a solution to have an equal amount of space between the chapter description (which is 7,5 pts and the 1st verse 11,25pts). I worry about having that many pages to fix, while the text of our Bible isnt fixed yet. Its still being revised, and some word modified there and there to be closer to the KJV.

    Because of all the downsides of having all text aligned, I’m thinking letting go of it and just keep it to justify everywhere. Unless that I’m still missing something, and a solution is still out there…

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