Return to General InDesign Topics (CLOSED)

• Author
  Posts
• • December 17, 2014 at 3:37 pm #72295
    Kenny H

    Member

    Hi, we are trying to layout a fairly large product catalog, so using tables are essential. But just running into some frustrations trying to get our design to work. If it’s helpful, we use Indd CS6, but if there have been significant upgrades to how tables work (desperately needed) with CC, we’d be willing to upgrade.

    A) Top/bottom stroke issue:
    We would like to have all rows have a top border declared, while the bottom is ignored. This would allow bottom rows to not have a bottom border (what we prefer). But when the table spans across pages, the last row on one page is showing the top border of the next pages’ row on it’s bottom. Cannot figure out how to have the last row not have a bottom border while the next page’s top row has a top border. We don’t want to split the table up into tons of separate tables as that would make for reflow nightmares if things need to shift.

    – ???

    B) Gradient border from solid to transparent:
    Ideally, we would like our borders to be a gradient from a solid color to transparent as you can do in Illustrator & Photoshop. But can’t figure out a way to do this as it appears InD has to use the gradient feather to ‘fake’ this effect, and I can’t see how to apply this to the table borders. For pages with a known solid background color, we can fake it by transitioning to the background color, but sometimes the background may not be solid (e.g., over a faded back photo). The hard edge on the gradient looks terrible.

    – ???

    C) Any other major advances with tables in InDesign CC compared to InDesign CS6? The tables are just so limited & kludgy in InD, especially when compared to things like tables in HTML/CSS.

    Thanks!

  • December 17, 2014 at 5:31 pm #72296
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Nope, nothing changed in CC to fix those frustrations.

  • December 17, 2014 at 6:17 pm #72297
    Kenny H

    Member

    Swell. Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it!

    Any ‘creative’ workarounds I could do?? The biggest issue will be the bottom borders on the end of rows on each page as this happens all through the book. I can’t imagine anyone who’s ever used InD to layout a catalog with tables has not had a need to NOT have both top & bottom borders.

    For the transparency gradients, these may only happen on a couple pages, so we may just fake it with a proper gradient object floating where the border should be. NOT an elegant or safe solution, but hopefully nothing would move these out of position.

    Thanks!

  • December 26, 2014 at 11:36 pm #72362
    Adam Jury

    Member

    Can you fake the top border on all the tables by putting a stroke (or some other object?) on the master page? Or do the tables start at different heights on some pages?

  • January 5, 2015 at 12:33 pm #72517
    Kenny H

    Member

    Hi Adam,
    We could fake the top border with a stroke and then get rid of it on the top rows of pages. We would just have to be very wary of any reflow as edits are made or items are added. We would probably have to do this as a very last step before making final mechanicals.

    Was just hoping for something that could ‘ride’ in the flow of the table. What a frustrating little problem!

    Thanks for any suggestions, though!

  • January 7, 2015 at 2:32 pm #72556
    Adam Jury

    Member

    If you have a single master page for the entire catalog, can you make a duplicate master page, apply the top-border to that master page, and then apply that master page to every single page that needs it as a near-final step in production?

  • January 7, 2015 at 6:09 pm #72563
    Kenny H

    Member

    Hey Adam. That’s a good idea, we’ll keep it in mind. Unfortunately, the border is not 100% consistent in all instances (sometimes it spans all columns, sometimes just one, etc.). So we’d still have to override in a number of places.

    I’m wondering about adding an extra ‘fake’ row in-between the pages, but in a text frame off on the pasteboard (not on page). This way, at least we could keep actual table borders, which is probably safer in regards to placement and style. I’m imagining that as long as the off-page text frame was only large enough to handle one empty row, it would just be a matter of adding these rows where needed. Still seems very kludgy, but not sure how else to do this.

    Thanks!

  • January 8, 2015 at 2:21 am #72571
    Colleen Shannon

    Member

    This is not a solution, just a workaround. (If I understand your idea correctly) I created a table with no strokes. Applied Paragraph Rules (insets and baseline shift) to Item/Price Paragraph Style. Drew a Pathfinder/Subtract shape to simulate a border, applied Directional Feather Effect (pink color to transparent). So, it’s two separate pieces, but allows your table to flow page to page.

    Not perfect, but hope it helps. https://i.imgur.com/peGIYED.png

  • January 8, 2015 at 11:58 am #72580
    Kenny H

    Member

    Hi Colleen. Thanks for the creative thinking here!

    Can you elaborate on what you mean by ‘drew a pathfinder/subtract shape to simulate a border’? I’m not sure I follow what you were doing here.

    It appears you at first were saying you used a paragraph rule as a top border. That was my first thought, but unfortunately we decided the text needs to align to the middle of the table cell, not that top. Otherwise, that would have worked fine.

    But I’m not sure how you were adding/applying the path with directional feather to the table cells, as that was the other thing we were trying to accomplish (though we may be able to let that one go if we must).

    Thanks again for any & all help here!

  • January 8, 2015 at 1:47 pm #72591
    Colleen Shannon

    Member

    Just align the text to the center of the cell and adjust the rule accordingly. It’s really hard to picture what you want without a screenshot.

    I tried something else, which so far looks good:
    1. Create a header row and a column before and after your Item/Price columns, then a Footer Row.
    2. Fill the top row with color
    3. Fill the left and right columns with color, except the Footer Row.
    4. Create a rectangle the size of the left/right column cell, apply Color, then Effect->Directional Feather->Bottom .5 (or whatever works) copy, select Type Tool, paste into cell.

    Check it out – your top and bottom should be the same as the table flows to each frame/page.

    View post on imgur.com

    
    IDML file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/s0aocn4xelyfxbs/catalog-test-3.idml?dl=0

    A big thing with Tables in this case is to make sure cells have 0 inset, cell sizes are Exact (when you want them to be). The only cell that isn’t truly scalable is the one with the Directional Feather.

    Good Luck!
    Neeners

  • January 8, 2015 at 4:29 pm #72597
    Kenny H

    Member

    Hi Coleen,
    I really appreciate your taking the time to show the workaround ideas. The gradient in the footer would work well for that scenario, as long as the rows remained a consistent height I suppose (though I thought header/footer rows had to have same content). That’s good thinking!

    Unfortunately, what we wanted to be a transparent gradient border is the top border of each cell/row.

    So in your example, the borders above the item & price cells would have the gradient rules with transparency. But this is not possible to add as either a paragraph rule or as a table border, as both just use a gradient swatch which has no transparency. I thought about embedding an object in each cell, but it would have the same issue as a paragraph rule – wouldn’t work right if text doesn’t align top (and adds a lot of complexity).

    To give a better idea of what we’re doing compared to your example, our ‘Item’ column has photo thumbnails, and our ‘Price’ column has all the corresponding product details. Unfortunately, the product details can vary from maybe 2-7 lines of text, depending how how verbose the client is. So there’s no way to know the offset for the top paragraph rule, as it is constantly varying. If text was top-aligned, we’d be fine and wouldn’t have these issues. But it left too much empty space at the bottom of description cells when the content was short.

    Ugh, tables. So necessary sometimes, but so frustrating as well…

    Thanks!

  • January 9, 2015 at 7:55 pm #72618
    Colleen Shannon

    Member

    There’s no such thing as too much empty space at the bottom. Design 101. My argument is that the reader needs a place to put their thumbs!

    https://www.serif.com/blog/how-important-is-white-space-in-print-design/

    -You could have the transparent border in a separate cell in between items. Another crazy idea is to find a bitmapped gradient font, or make one yourself.

    Good luck.

• Author
  Posts