QXP can do sharpening now.

My issue with sharpening in QXP or ID, or any other layout application for that matter, is one of how images are displayed. They are generally slightly softer to a lot more “blurry” than in PS or any other good image editor (I believe that Corel’s Photo Paint is the least soft image editor). I believe with QXP’s “new” rendering engine and its ability to zoom so far and retain a “quality” image, it is the worst layout application to do sharpening in, but ID even on high-quality is too soft in my opinion. While QXP’s effects such as sharpening are non-destructive, it adds another layer for the PDF review process.

So when sharpening is done with a soft preview–and do remember that what ID is showing is a proxy image–then it is too easy to over sharpen. So if/when ID ever does get in-application sharpening, do review all PDFs containing images carefully to see if over sharpening has occurred. I would argue that one may be able to get a very good sense of what is enough or too much in-application sharpening…but if one has to add one more thing to the PDF review process, why bother doing sharpening in application?

Mike’s unasked for 2 cents of thought…

You should design pages that exceed the 200″ limit (page + bleed size is limited to 200″ in a PDF) at say 50% scale and instruct the output vendor to scale to 200%.

Which means that ideally if there are bitmaps also in the design, they should be twice the target resolution. So if the target resolution is 150 dpi, the images at 50% scale should be 300 effective DPI at design scale.

There are ways around the above but they only work when sending the resulting PDF to a print vendor that is using Adobe RIPS (and a couple others based upon them, I believe).

Mike

One could always beg (er, request) Adobe to add a paragraph spacing attribute like the now inexpensive PagePlus has. That is, there is a checkbox when defining a paragraph style to not add space before and/or after when followed by the same style. Very useful for lists of any sort. It hits an ePub fine as well (from what little I tested anyway).

Span columns in ID, like mentioned, can cause a big performance hit if not used sparingly. In something like a book where this span feature could be used a lot, I think the 3 paragraph styles work best. I haven’t used the script mentioned, but sounds like a great means of automation–so thanks, Kai!

Mike

Then do not use the template. Just use the data file and place your placeholders and run the merge to a new document.

You’ll need a different script for in-line merges because with multiple records per page, you will have one text frame per record and these frames are not linked. There are free scripts that will link those frames. Then you would need to delete all pages but the first page, delete all the frames except the first frame, increase its size to the page margins top/bottom, then autoflow onto a new page.

The problem with not using tables is you will find some/many of the descriptions are too long to fit the space from your screen shot.

The XML is also not well-formed. The minimum you need to do is to encode the ampersands to their html counterparts. That will likely allow ID to use the XML.

I imagine this could be scripted…not be me, but by someone who actually knows how to script in ID…

If I were doing this as a merge, I would just use Em Software’s InData as it can do this without needing to hide anything. One would write the merge script to allow for the two conditions and use the appropriate character style and at the merge it just happens. InData also has far greater utility for merging than just for something like this and if you do merging much, take a look at it.

Mike

Hello John,

Likely the medial s can be scripted. It can also be handled 99% of the way within a font if thus coded to do so. Same with the non-breaking spaces before/after certain punctuation.

Do note that the rules for the medial s are dependent upon era and country. They changed with time and even then were not adamantly adhered to. So even if a script could be written to do the substitution, what would be proper for one text from one print establishment may not wholly apply to another text from even the same era and most likely from another country.

Setting handwritten manuscripts from a given era/country also adds a layer of variable to the medial s issue. Most of the handwritten manuscripts I have seen (even French manuscripts) use the regular s character or an odd mix of regular and medial s depending upon, I guess, the mood of the writer. Space before/after punctuation also varies.

Proper nouns may be able to be caught with GREP or a script…but the text better be carefully checked afterwards.

I am finishing up a font right now that handles the 99% of the medial s and punctuation thing. It is tailored to a certain country’s rules (France) and a given era (early 19th century). Handing the italicized proper nouns and catching proper noun abbreviations that end with s (which require the medial s), though, is going to be a manual slog through the text even if I do a find/change.

Mike

The topic is pretty broad, even if the style of typefaces is pretty limited. To get you started, I’ll first say most sans Gothic typefaces will likely suffice. Secondly, I’ll give you a couple URLs.

https://fontsinuse.com/uses/5/typefaces-at-the-bauhaus

https://www.designhistory.org/Avant_Garde_pages/BauhausType.html

As for freebies, be careful where you grab some from. ID and AI are pretty particular when it comes to fonts and there will be many that are commercial fonts that are ripped-off and are of dubious quality (largely due to the conversion applications that ripped them from the Type 1 versions).

That said, FontSquirrel, Google Fonts, etc., will have Bauhaus style fonts and are generally of good quality.

Mike

Change the figure type in the paragraph style to Lining Figures. They will line up the same as the non-existent tabular figures in the Freight families. At least my version does.