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• • October 30, 2014 at 2:10 pm #71321
    stewb

    Member

    Hey there,
    I’m trying to find the best way to lay out some Japanese type, and I’m wondering if there’s a GREP solution.

    In Japanese, there are a handful of characters that are not allowed to start a line.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_breaking_rules_in_East_Asian_languages#Line_breaking_rules_in_Japanese_text_.28Kinsoku_Shori.29

    When I flow a paragraph from my translator or make a change that results in re-ragging the text (like changing the frame width,) I need to get it all proofed by my guy in Japan so he can check the line breaks. This generally costs me 1 day due to the time difference.

    Short of learning Japanese myself, I could save a lot of time if I had a GREP style that highlights any “illegal” character when it appears at the beginning of a line.

    If I put this in the GREP style box, it only identifies the first character of a paragraph.
    ^[?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?]

    Is there another function that would recognize the leftmost character on each line?

  • October 30, 2014 at 2:19 pm #71323
    stewb

    Member

    The GREP in the first post is actually meant to be the Japanese characters separated by pipes, and not a bunch of question marks.

  • October 31, 2014 at 2:32 am #71350
    Chris Thompson

    Member

    Does the Japanese Paragraph Composer handle that problem more elegantly?

    Chris.

  • October 31, 2014 at 8:44 am #71354
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    Stewb,

    You’re out of luck, as far as GREP is concerned. Tutorials and references may happily refer to “lines”, but these are not the same kind of line as in InDesign, where the equivalent is “paragraph”. InDesign’s GREP cannot locate the start and end of lines *inside* paragraphs.

    It’s possible to write a script that checks for each of these characters, as scripts CAN see individual lines.

  • November 3, 2014 at 7:11 am #71390
    stewb

    Member

    Thanks!
    I figured I was out of luck, but you never know. I think I will make an empty character style, then apply it to the GREP style for the characters (regardless of location) and run a manual check on all the occurrences to verify they don’t start a line. Still a process, but it shouldn’t take less than a day. I guess I’ll start on that script in the offseason, too.

    I abandoned the Japanese Paragraph Composer a few versions ago, but maybe it’s time to revisit.

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