If you set the Offset in a frame's Baseline Options to Leading with a minimum offset of zero, and then set the leading for your one-line paragraph to zero, it will sit on top of the frame. Is this what you want? Or just a label for the frame along the lines of Rorohiko's FrameReporter?

David

I don't mean to look a gift horse in the mouth, but this very handy script seems not to work for languages that don't come with ID, such as Chinese and Japanese (it took me a while to realize my ID grabbed those languages from imported files). Poking around, I found an older script Jongware made available over on Adobe's ID scripting forum that does find all the languages in a document, though so thorough a check takes time. I often get files with all kinds of odd languages, and I can't search for them unless I know they're there. So I really want to thank Jongware for both scripts.

David

Do you want to have p. 1 open on the right in a 2-up view in Acrobat/Reader? If so, in Acrobat 9 Pro, under Document Properties/Initial View, the Page Layout setting lets you select Two-Up (Cover Page) or Two-Up Continuous (Cover Page), but the setting doesn't take effect until you close and save the file.

David

The trick for putting two or three short footnotes on a single line might serve your needs: define separate paragraph styles for each column, with the appropriate indent, giving those for the 2nd and 3rd columns zero leading. However, putting three lines on top of each other makes editing difficult outside of the story editor — not so bad for a few footnotes every now and again, but tedious for page after page of material like your example.

David

I wrote a crude little Javascript that copies the contents of paragraphs marked with four unique paragraph styles into the Title, Author, Subject (a.k.a. Description) and Keywords categories. I decided not to copy actual text from the article because I usually need to edit it for the metadata: an article's title often includes forced line breaks, and there may be a sub-title set in a separate paragraph style; or there may be phrases in italics, which I need to enclose in quotes for formatless metadata. So I make a non-printing text frame in the margin on the opener, where I prepare the stuff I want to go into the XMP metadata.

It works in IDCS4, but I assume it wouldn't be hard to write something similar for IDCS3. I don't recall whether Style Groups came in with CS4, but I used them, irritating as they can be. The one bit of subtlety was using an array for keywords which made it convenient to separate my keywords with commas in my text box and still get fed properly into XMP. No error checking — the script dies if it can't find an instance of a paragraph style, and I don't know what happens if there are two. I'll paste my script below in case anyone wants to play with it. I hope the big boys will excuse my noob oversights.

David

app.findGrepPreferences = NothingEnum.nothing;
app.changeGrepPreferences = NothingEnum.nothing;
app.findGrepPreferences.appliedParagraphStyle = app.activeDocument.paragraphStyleGroups.item(“XMP_Basic4”).paragraphStyles.item(“Title”);
app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat = “r”;
app.findGrepPreferences.appliedParagraphStyle = app.activeDocument.paragraphStyleGroups.item(“XMP_Basic4”).paragraphStyles.item(“Author”);
app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat = “(?<=^).+(?=$)”;
app.activeDocument.metadataPreferences.author = app.findGrep()[0].contents;

app.findGrepPreferences = NothingEnum.nothing;
app.changeGrepPreferences = NothingEnum.nothing;
app.findGrepPreferences.appliedParagraphStyle = app.activeDocument.paragraphStyleGroups.item(“XMP_Basic4”).paragraphStyles.item(“Title”);
app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat = “(?<=^).+(?=$)”;
app.activeDocument.metadataPreferences.documentTitle = app.findGrep()[0].contents;

app.findGrepPreferences = NothingEnum.nothing;
app.changeGrepPreferences = NothingEnum.nothing;
app.findGrepPreferences.appliedParagraphStyle = app.activeDocument.paragraphStyleGroups.item(“XMP_Basic4”).paragraphStyles.item(“Description”);
app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat = “(?<=^).+(?=$)”;
app.activeDocument.metadataPreferences.description = app.findGrep()[0].contents;

MyKeywordsPara = ” “;
app.findGrepPreferences = NothingEnum.nothing;
app.changeGrepPreferences = NothingEnum.nothing;
app.findGrepPreferences.appliedParagraphStyle = app.activeDocument.paragraphStyleGroups.item(“XMP_Basic4”).paragraphStyles.item(“Keywords”);
MyKeywordsPara = app.findGrep()[0].contents;
app.activeDocument.metadataPreferences.keywords = MyKeywordsPara.split(“,”)

app.findGrepPreferences = NothingEnum.nothing;
app.changeGrepPreferences = NothingEnum.nothing;

I'd be interested in something like this, too. Part of the trouble with XMP metadata is it's so subtle that just remembering to insert and proof it isn't easy. I'd love to automagically insert Title and Author from paragraph styles for same, and I could see a non-printing element on opening pages where I could put and view the Keywords going into XMP.

Unfortunately, XMP metadata doesn't come up very often over on Adobe's InDesign forum, but I notice that today there is this thread<https://forums.adobe.com/thread/786176?tstart=0&#62;, albeit on a different aspect. That's enough to suggest scripting is the way to go, in which case it should be worth looking in on Adobe's InDesign Scripting forum. There the granddaddy of InDesign scripting, Olav Kvern, pointed in the general direction in this thread<https://forums.adobe.com/thread/541175&#62; from late 2009. Given the forums' limited searching capability, you might want to Google<[terms you want to search on] “InDesign Scripting > Discussions” site:forums.adobe.com/thread/>.

Good luck,
David

The problem I tried to describe is where in the middle of a run of pages with footnotes, with one text frame per page linked fore and aft, IDCS4 suddenly decides to leave an entire frame blank and flow the text into the next page and frame.

So far as I recall, this occurs in files born in IDCS4, with text from MS Word files prepared in a separate dummy ID file to remove all MS Word styles and to apply the correct fonts. And sometimes it seems to happen between the time I saved and closed the file and then opened it again, i.e., without my making any changes at all. It is not a matter of keeps options (I generally define the auto footnote paragraph without keeps — I usually apply “keep last two lines together” by hand only as needed). It is as if, in re-flowing the text, ID gets confused, forgets about the whole frame, and goes on to the next page/frame.

When this happens, I don't think I've ever tried David Blatner's trick for forcing a text reflow<https://creativepro.com/force-text-reflow-when-indesign-forgets-to-flow-the-text.php&#62;, “Recompose All Stories” (shortcut Command-Option-/ (slash) or Ctrl-Alt-slash). Perhaps my habit of lengthening the frame is equivalent to his double-clicking the text frame, though sometimes I must leave the frame a shade longer to maintain page-breaks.

As for catching frames that are not of a specific length, I suspect that's scriptable.

David

I have seen many instances in IDCS4 where a blank page replaces what used to be correctly formatted text with footnotes, with that content flowed onto the following page(s). Usually, adding a point or two to the blank frames' height brings the text back, and I think I can often go back to the original height and still keep the text in place.

I take this to be one of ID's “little ways” with footnotes. To me, it resembles ID's habit of occasionally losing the separator line above the footnotes when I use a different separator for footnotes that continue onto a second page, as if the footnote-making sub-process doesn't quite complete properly. ID's preflighting will generally flag overset text caused by the re-flowing after the blank frame, but I find I have to check the footnote separators individually. Or, if I remember, I can just run the fix for the latter problem: change the document's separator and then change it back.

David