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• • November 12, 2009 at 10:42 am #53648
    skilldrick

    Member

    We're in a transitionary period at the company I work at, where many of our subcontractors are using CS4, but we haven't yet upgraded from CS3. We can open their INX files absolutely fine and with no problems, except for one thing:

    Occasionally, in CS3, a paragraph will end with a short word on its last line (I've heard this described as a widow and an orphan), but CS4 has some kind of magic to stop this happening. The problem with this is that the text reflows when it gets into CS3. The simplest option would be to turn this option off in CS4, but I can't see any way of doing this. Does anyone have any ideas?

  • November 12, 2009 at 1:23 pm #53655
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Eh yeh I get what you mean, and sometimes Ballance Ragged Lines can sort this out, but I understand how Runts can look in text, especially when two lines of text push onto the next page, usually I have it set in the Keep Options to keep 3 lines together.

    But if you wanted to you could find the space between words at the end of a paragraph and change that to a No Break or a Non-Breaking Space if you wanted.

    This GREP search will find all spaces bewteen

    (?<=.)s(?=w+.$)

    and in Change Format you can change this to No Break

    The GREP might have limited success and may need tweaking.

  • November 12, 2009 at 1:30 pm #53656
    Harbs

    Member

    In CS4, they improved the composer, so that you end up with less one word lines at the end of the paragraphs. Unfortunately, this can cause text reflow when moving a file from CS3 to CS4. The text should only reflow after you edit the text in CS4.

    Harbs

  • November 12, 2009 at 2:18 pm #53659
    skilldrick

    Member

    @hank: Thanks, that's a nice regex. I'll have to give that a go. Part of the problem is that I don't know how long a word has to be in CS4 that it won't let it on its own line.

    @Harbs: The problem with this is that I'm moving files from CS4 to CS3, so the text has to reflow (because CS3 doesn't have the same functionality). Incidentally, I'm not sure whether I like the idea of text reflowing only when you edit it, takes me back to my Ventura days :P

  • November 12, 2009 at 4:05 pm #53667
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Well I only half explained the regex, doh!

    Ok, it will find spaces between the last two words of a paragraph. And apply a no break to the space only. This forces two words to be on the next line.

    I'm not sure how CS4 handles files, but I use that regex a lot because I hate runts and I hate the InDesign CS3 cannot handle them, I'm unsure how CS4 does it though

  • November 12, 2009 at 4:33 pm #53671
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    There is a slightly more focused grep expression in this Link (it makes the space before the last word in the paragraph no break).

    Unfortunately, text can always reflow when moving from one version to another (especially backward). That's why I like the “don't reflow text until it gets edited” feature in InDesign. Everything is (or should be) locked in place unless you go in and change something in the story.

    Note that Blatner Tools (for cs3 and cs4) also has a feature that can find runts for you automatically. (The proper word is not widow or orphan, it's “short last line” or “runt”).

  • November 12, 2009 at 4:45 pm #53673
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Thanks David, I couldn't figure some of it out.

    Ok I've revised my regex to this

    (?<=.)s(?=w+?[[:punct:]]*s*$)

    That will select only the last space between two words in a paragraph. Seems to work fine with punctuation added at the end of the paragraph too.

    It would be wise to perhaps remove any trailing white spaces first though.

    Both are really good, I couldn't have done it without a bit of help :) I'm just a mere GREP peasant amongst the GREP Kings. Although I learned something from this too ;)

  • November 12, 2009 at 8:34 pm #53682
    Harbs

    Member

    FWIW, There was a discussion on the feature request area of the InDesign U2U forum here: https://forums.adobe.com/messag&#8230;..73#2280373

    I posted a couple of GREPs there…

  • November 12, 2009 at 10:55 pm #53683
    Dwayne Harris

    Member

    The publishers I work with don't have a problem with one word on the last line of a paragraph. In fact, hypyhenated words are allowed if they are more than four characters (not counting punctuation) by some. I usually try to have a full word, personally. But it depends on the length of the paragraph. Sometimes in books, there is a lot of dialogue and paragraphs are only a few lines.

  • December 6, 2009 at 11:21 am #54150
    Harbs

    Member

    Here's a (solution?) for preserving line breaks. Please don't blame me for this!

    https://in-tools.com/wordpress/&#8230;..omposition

    Harbs

  • December 9, 2009 at 2:26 am #54179
    Dwayne Harris

    Member

    Harbs–I just grabbed your script just in case we ever need it at work and will check it out. It sounds like it could come in handy.

    Do you want to hear a good one??

    We did a job and the designer was only using CS2. So we did the job in that and sent it back to her so she could add her art and stuff. But then the publishing house decided their designer should tweak things a bit. So their designer did it in CS4. Then it was sent back to us for corrections. We did that, and sent it back. But then another designer decided to tweak more and only had CS3. So we had to export as an inx file. That designer did their thing and off it went. Then the other publisher did another change in CS4 and sent it to the original designer for her last-minute tweaks, but like I said–she only has CS2. So they sent it back to us to export from CS4 to CS3 to CS2 and it was a disaster. Line breaks totally changed and it was a nightmare. Oh–did I mention that it was due at the printer that day???

    doc

  • March 25, 2010 at 10:16 am #55302
    CalvinFold

    Participant

    These orphan/runt control GREP Styles are clever way around the lack of an actual CS4 option to prevent it (still wishing!). CS4 might be better at controlling the problem, but it isn't perfect and the proofreaders call me on it every time. I've been starting to use GREP styles to just automatically eliminate anything they might catch.

    Now I can add this little trick…

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