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• • October 24, 2011 at 5:39 am #60891
    Jordan

    Member

    Hello!

    I've been working with InDesign CS4 converting a book to epub and have run in to a little bit of trouble here and there. You guys have been so helpful and one day I hope I am able to repay the favor!

    The book I'm working with uses a unique font as drop cap for the beginning of every chapter, and the request was to retain that look. Because this is not your typical font, I've saved the drop cap as a jpeg and placed it into the start of the chapter as the first item in the first line.

    But, here's where the trouble starts. I cannot move the drop cap down where a typical drop cap should be. I can't even get the bottom of the letter to line up with the first line. It just hovers above the line.

    1) Is there a way to fix this? I looked in the xhtml file to see if I could add some code and I located where it refers to it, but I don't know what or exactly where I can put this.

    2) If I were to get CS5.5, would I be able to acheive what I'm trying to do easily? Does CS5.5 allow you to keep a unique font in places?

    Any thoughts or help would be much appreciated. I'm so close to finishing! I can see the light…

    Thank you in advance!

    Jordan

  • October 24, 2011 at 6:12 am #60892
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    This is far easier in CS5.5, though you may still need to create the dropcap as an anchored image. The key is that you need a float tag in the css styles (just like you do in html). You can hand-code it yourself, though, in cs4.

  • October 24, 2011 at 10:51 pm #60895
    Jordan

    Member

    Thank you for the suggestion.

    I downloaded the trial of CS5.5 and anchored the image. But I'm still having the same spacing issue. The letter is much higher than the line of text and I'm trying to move it down (so that it looks like a drop cap, or at this point even level with the line of text) and shift the text properly so that it doesn't flow over the letter.

    I read your note about adding a float tag to the css, but I cannot find the jpeg in the css. I can only locate it in the html. So, if I were to add a float tag in the html, what would be the exact code for moving down the jpeg and exactly where in the code would I place it? Would it be margin-top: 2em; (for example)?

    Any thoughts or help would be greatly appreciated. I know it can be done, but am having trouble with this bit.

    Thanks again for the help so far! It's really much appreciated! (I've been watching everything on Lynda that I can on InDesign, but I still can't seem to figure it out).

    Jordan

  • October 26, 2011 at 8:59 am #60913
    Amy Gilbert

    Participant

    To do the drop cap with an image, use an img class. Here's the css code.

    img.dropcap {

    float:left;

    }

    Then in your html, tag all of those drop cap images with class=”dropcap” (you can change dropcap to something else if you want). Not sure if you can export from InDesign with the class already applied. That would be cool but I don't know how to do it. I know in CS 5.5, InDesign uses object styles to create div classes but I'm not sure how to create img classes.

    To do your drop cap with text, you can embed the font you want to use for the dropcap (it's an option in the output I think on the Contents tab) and then use this code in your css:

    span.dropcap {

    font-family: “font name”;

    font-weight: bold;

    font-size: 4em;

    float:left;

    line-height: 1em;

    }

    In CSS, “dropcap” is the span class. In InDesign, it's a character style (you can use something other than dropcap if you want of course). In CS 4 I think you may need to use Jongware's handy preptext script to turn drop caps and nested styles into regularly applied character styles. Make your drop cap style bold and preptext will create a “bold” character style that you can then rename to dropcap (or whatever you like to match your css span class) provided you don't have any other bold in your file – if you do, use small caps to create the Scap style or pick one of the other styles it creates. You don't need to do this in 5.5 as InDesign now outputs dropcaps and nested styles as character styles.

  • October 28, 2011 at 6:28 am #60942
    Jordan

    Member

    Amy,

    Thanks so much for that detailed response! Very helpful. I am trying to work on it now using your ideas.

    I will let you know how it works.

    Thanks again for being so helpful!

    Jordan

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