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• • May 22, 2013 at 8:59 am #33640
    Ed Horrigan

    Participant

    Hi – I have a customer that wants to print sequential numbers (up to 10+ digits/alphas) but wants them to print backwards, as if in a mirror (You would have to look at the number in a mirror to read it)as well as forwards.

    Is there anything in Indesign that can do this?

  • May 23, 2013 at 6:18 am #33656
    Matt Mayerchak

    Participant

    You could gang up a bunch of GREP searches, one for each # of digits. If all #s ended with something like a tab or a return, for instance – you have to include that or it will reapply to the ones it already reversed.

    Start with the largest – in this case, a 10-digit #.

    Find (\d)(\d)(\d)(\d)(\d)(\d)(\d)(\d)(\d)(\d)\r Replace with $10$9$8$7$6$5$4$3$2$1\r

    Then repeat for 9 digits, 8 digits, etc. As long as you have the ending code (\r) for a return, or () for a tab, or even a space character, you can control how many digits it will find at a time.

    You can run them all at once using FindChangebyList (a free script) or gang them up into a set with the $39 Multi-Find/change plugin from Automatication.

  • May 23, 2013 at 7:56 am #33661
    David Goodrich

    Participant

    I read “backwards” in the original post as applying to more than just the sequence, but also to the glyphs themselves: mirror images. That effect is easy enough to achieve for a text box in ID by dragging one side past the other (which also works vertically). If that is what Ed wants then it shouldn’t be too hard to set a few such boxes inline with text. For more than a few I imagine this could be scripted, but that would be way out of my league.

    David

  • May 23, 2013 at 8:15 am #33663
    Matt Mayerchak

    Participant

    Ah – yes, I see I missed that “mirror” part. So, you just select the text box and click “flip horizontal”.

    If it needs to be anchored in other text, you anchor a flipped text box.

  • May 30, 2013 at 12:42 pm #33756
    Ed Horrigan

    Participant

    thanks for the help – seems too simple. The customer wants like a 10 digit alphanumeric, printed one number to a unit (page, ticket, etc., I’m not sure what he is printing) so I don’t know if it is within the bounds of what I can do – sounds like it will need mail house software to get it done. I’m still grappling with merging data indesign and printshop mail. I couldn’t tell you what a GREP search is if it was right in front of me….

    Ah, google.

  • May 30, 2013 at 1:37 pm #33757
    Matt Mayerchak

    Participant

    Something to try (It works, but may not be what you need):

    1. Create a new document.
    2. On the master page, put a text box for the backwards number (could be within the ticket art)
    3. Click on the flip horizontal button so the page # box is mirrored.
    4. Add pages to the document.
    5. Create the numbers in Excel, then save the column as a text file and place the text file into Indesign, one # per page or per ticket. Since the master text frame is flipped horizontally, all the text that is placed will be flipped on each page.
    6. To get the #s to be only one per page, you can change all the paragraph returns to Column Breaks. You could run several ticket on a page, or one page per ticket. Should work either way.

    I tried the idea of having the page #s be your ticket #s, and this works, but you are limited to 6 digits. There are options for using prefixes and text variables that might help with that, but I think generating the #s in Excel is probably easier.

  • May 31, 2013 at 2:37 am #33761
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    If you are creating thousands of different iterations of your artwork with the only variable being a code number then you should speak to your print provider first, as you would have to run it digitally to make that work.

    You may find that you can put in ten 0s or Xs in good old PMS Rubine Red, supply one PDF and then let the printers sort it out :)

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