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• • April 26, 2022 at 2:26 am #14364876
    Rivkah Lewis

    Member

    I’m designing a joke book and the author wants each joke/riddle to be followed by its punchline/asnwer below it, upside-down.
    The first thign that came to mind was linked text boxes with flipped direction in the answer ones.
    I am wondering if there is an easier way.
    There are a few hundred jokes and riddles and I want a setup that will be forgiving of changes in text and joke order.

    Any ideas?

    TIA!

  • April 26, 2022 at 3:11 am #14364877
    Steve Davis

    Participant

    Funnily enough, I worked on a similar project a few years ago for a Jewish organisation in the US.

    The upside-down boxes were created upside down and all text boxes (designed and formatted) were auto-sizing.

  • April 27, 2022 at 8:52 am #14364895
    Rivkah Lewis

    Member

    So each joke and answer was in its own text box?
    Linked?

  • April 27, 2022 at 9:14 am #14364915
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Yeah, I think that may be the easiest way to go. Something like this? (Using Type > Insert Break > Frame Break) after each question or answer:
    

  • April 27, 2022 at 9:43 am #14364951
    Rivkah Lewis

    Member

    Thanks for the advice and the chuckle :)
    I’m somehow thinking this joke book mght be just up your alley….

  • April 27, 2022 at 10:54 am #14364963
    Steve Davis

    Participant

    David illustrated what I suggested albeit with a rather poor joke! ;-)

  • April 29, 2022 at 12:13 pm #14365053
    Anne-Marie Concepcion

    Member

    David I know your answer works but to me it’s a little too much work to keep things aligned and neat.

    Here’s another approach … a single text frame for the questions, with an empty return between the paragraphs in which to anchor the individual text frames with answers. You’ll need to rotate them 180 degrees, but the auto sizing and paragraph style could be done automatically with an object style.

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/uels9nscvx09djj/upside%20down%20answers.png?dl=0

    AM

  • April 29, 2022 at 2:28 pm #14365060
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Anne-Marie, your suggestion is a great one, but you can’t thread the text easily from question to answer — you’d need to cut the answers and paste them into each anchored frame, one at a time.
    So with your method, you may save time formatting but you’d use more time with setting up the frames.
    Of course, if this were hundreds of pages long, or you had to do it often, then it would relatively straightforward to make a script that handled a lot of the hassles.

  • May 1, 2022 at 2:14 am #14365065
    Rivkah Lewis

    Member

    Thanks Ann-Marie.
    I guess I’m going to figure out from the 2 options which flows better for me.
    I’d like to avoid the copy-paste if possible.

    Thanks all!!

  • May 1, 2022 at 12:04 pm #14365068
    Rivkah Lewis

    Member

    @David, are you suggesting there is a script that could be written to flip the answer boxes so they don’t have to each be done individually?

  • May 2, 2022 at 9:42 am #14365093
    Anne-Marie Concepcion

    Member

    I hear ya, Rivkah!

    Honestly I would tend to go with my way because there are 50% fewer text frames needed (as opposed to David’s solution), and no need to copy/paste … just Shift-drag the blue anchor box that’s on the answer frames to the empty paragraph returns.

    And I just think it’s easier to control the layout with a paragraph style for the anchored frames .. like if you want to change alignment or space above/below … than with threaded frames. Also, imagine having to rearrange the order of items, as you mentioned. What a nightmare with threaded frames. Far easier to just use the Type tool to cut and paste the question and the anchored answer.

    Here is something that will save you time regardless of which solution you choose. Create one text frame with all the punchlines/answers in it, one after the other, separated by a single paragraph return.

    Then run the free Split Text Frame script from Ajar Productions, here:

    Split Text Extension for InDesign

    That will convert the single text frame into multiple ones, each with a single paragraph.

    Now you can drag-select over all of them (however many you fit in the starting text frame), make sure your proxy point is the center of the grid, and choose Object > Transform > Rotate 180.

    AM

  • May 2, 2022 at 10:11 am #14365100
    Rivkah Lewis

    Member

    Anne-Marie – this was incredibly helpful!

    I was not aware of shift-dragging – what a time saver!
    And the script is great.

    As I’ve been tweaking the layout based on client feedback, there have been a lot of changes in the space between after/alignment/etc. So the anchored text boxes are serving me well.

    Thanks a gazillion!

  • May 2, 2022 at 10:37 am #14365102
    Joao Carlos Pinho

    Member

    It seems the original poster already have a fine solution.

    For those in the future with the same question, consider tables as a viable option if you have alternating lines of riddles and answers: https://imgur.com/a/hRHh60b

    • Select all text
    • Convert text to table
    • Create a cell style for the riddles and a cell style for the answers; the “answers” style should have the “Rotate text 180°” attribute
    • Apply one of the styles to all cells, then apply the other to the respective even or odd cells (unfortunately, there’s no “Apply this_cell_style then Next” command, like we have in paragraph styles)

    And that’s all. You have only to change the height of the cells according to you desired results.

    • May 2, 2022 at 10:47 am #14365105
      David Blatner

      Keymaster

      Joao: this is GREAT! Very very good solution.

      Forgive me, but how do you pronounce your name? Is it like “whow”?

    • May 2, 2022 at 11:10 am #14365106
      Rivkah Lewis

      Member

      How creative. I am playing around with this to see how easy it is to match the sample layout I have made for a regular text layout.

      What I have right now is:
      one liners
      riddles with answers on the following line, upside-down
      interesting facts about some of the riddles in a speech bubble being “spoken” by a comic figure

      Between each of the answers and the next riddle (that is, when the answer is not followed by a one liner which has its own style and font) I have a dingbat with a line as a separator.

      I can’t really auto-format this even with “next paragraph” styles because there is no pattern.
      I’ve set up shortcuts on my styles so it goes pretty smoothly. As the majority of the jokes are with answers, I do have a next style built in and just adjust when necessary. The most time consuming part is flipping and inserting the upside-down answers.
      Now I’m trying to figure out how much of a time saver the table will be with the variables mentioned above.
      I made a cell style for each kind of line but applying them feels more time consuming than regular style application (unless there is something I am missing here).

      Thanks so much for weighing in. It’s great to have a forum of helpful people!

  • May 2, 2022 at 12:33 pm #14365125
    Anne-Marie Concepcion

    Member

    Neat use of the table cell feature, Joao! I didn’t realize that the 180 degree rotation could be saved in a cell style.

    Unlike in an object style! Add your vote to this feature request here:
    https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/39147385-object-style-with-rotation-option

    Rivkah I hope you’ll share a screenshot of the solution you end up using!

    AM

  • May 2, 2022 at 1:17 pm #14365140
    Keith Gilbert

    Participant

    If you really want to “encode” an answer in a book, you could use the “Rotate selected characters” script at https://gilbertconsulting.com/scripts which will rotate each character in the selection 180°, making the text really hard to decipher!

  • May 3, 2022 at 12:53 am #14365192
    Steve Davis

    Participant

    I wonder if you would mind sharing a page of your InDesign file Rivkah, when you made it work!

  • May 3, 2022 at 4:32 am #14365194
    Joao Carlos Pinho

    Member

    Thank you very much, @David and @Anne-Marie!

    @David:
    It’s a Portuguese name: João, with a tilde. Unfortunately, there’s no corresponding sound in English for the “ão” diphthong. Even the “J” pronunciation is different from English. Here’s a sample: https://youtu.be/WfBzAvfcgMg?t=247

    • May 3, 2022 at 7:39 am #14365199
      David Blatner

      Keymaster

      Ah! Obrigato. That is helpful. I would describe it as “zhwaow” but I can tell that as an American it would be hard for me to say correctly.

  • May 25, 2022 at 11:51 am #14366061
    Rivkah Lewis

    Member

    As per your request, here’s how it worked out —

    Here is a screen shot of what I did in the end.
    I tried out all the ideas given here and in the end decided that Anne-Marie’s worked best for me.
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/u3pvbchegj9bz9i/joke-book-layout.png?dl=0

    The book included:
    Riddles with answers
    One liners
    Facts related to the joke being spoken by the book series’ mascot
    Longer story-type jokes

    I also added a separator between consecutive riddles with answers which were made of up a hand-drawn emoji type font with a rule behind it.
    The one liners and stories have line above/after to separate them.

    The client provided the file as a Google Sheet.
    Since the majority of the jokes were riddles with answers, I brought in just the first column of text to get one long file of jokes/riddles.

    I used search/replace to replace every end of paragraph with 3 end of paragraphs.

    I then selected all the text and applies my “joke” style and the next style to create the pattern of joke, answer line (a blank line with the correct spacing to accommodate the anchored text box of the answer), and divider.

    Then I brought in the answer column and used the script Anne-Marie noted to split each one into its own text box. I flipped them and shift-dragged them into the empty lines that were waiting for them.

    As I went along, I changed the style on the one-lines and stories and deleted the extra spaces after them.

    When that was done, I added int he blurbs manually. I had the character in 4 different positions and had them sitting in a library. I dragged one out, switched the text, and anchored them into place with their own par style to ensure correct spacing above and below.

    Finally, I went through the dividers and inserted letters at random – each one a different face. I originally set this up as a numbered list with letters and while it worked great, I didn’t like all of the faces so I wanted to stick to specific keys.

    The book has over 350 jokes and I was able to do all this in about 4 hours.

    I hope this helps someone.
    Thanks again all for your help. It was fun to figure this out.

  • May 25, 2022 at 11:53 am #14366064
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    So glad it worked out!
    The discussion was fun. I ended up recording João Carlos’ solution as a video here:

    How to Flip Text Upside Down in the Same Frame in InDesign

    But I love that you tried different things and found a solution that worked best for you. Thank you for coming back and letting us know.

  • May 25, 2022 at 12:55 pm #14366071
    Rivkah Lewis

    Member

    Great video!

    I shared the 3 suggested with my design students today – I love how ID has so many ways to get to the desired results.

    Certainly part of my choice was due to the fact that there was a lack of pattern in the text because of the different kinds of jokes.

  • May 25, 2022 at 3:13 pm #14366072
    Anne-Marie Concepcion

    Member

    Hey I love the look of the finished book!

    I’m glad you found the best solution for your project here. I loved reading all of the contributions.

    350 jokes in 4 hours, that’s amazing! Is there anywhere we can buy it? (even as a PDF?)

    I could use it w/my grandkids ;-)

    AM

  • May 26, 2022 at 12:11 am #14366076
    Rivkah Lewis

    Member

    Not yet – I’ll let you know when its for sale :)

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