What about a GREP paragraph style that applies the character style to Any Variable or a specific variable? This is passive, but the problem remains how to remove the appearance at output time. Is there a passive way to ignore the character color, using something like an ink alias?

HTH

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

Peter Spier wrote:

 

Depending on what formatting is already applied, this may or may not help you:

 

Make a new character style called Variable and in that style add a custom underline to use as a highlight. Use Grep Find/Change to find all variables and apply the style.  Before going to output either redefine the style to remove the highlight,  run Find/Change again to remove the style, or just delete the style and replace with none and uncheck the preserve formatting box. The last option is probably the worst of the three fro removing the highlight as if you need to edit again you'll have to re-establish the style.

Thanks, Peter S! I think I'm a pretty clever guy, but not as clever as the two of us combined. I'm not experienced in managing the non-printing-but-visible tricks, though sometimes I theorize usefully about things I'm unskilled in.

I tried (and failed) to set up a swaatch/ink property that would always trigger a preflight error, to alert users to reset the character style to print without problems, in case there's no way to build it in; your suggestion seems to manage the automation. So, I learned that preflight is another weak area for me.

I tested the GREP style approach before posting, but for a while I had problems making both the Find feature, and the GREP style, work in InDesign CS6! They wouldn't find any variable at all. It worked in CS5.5. After a bunch of failures I noticed that the  CS6 file wasn't saved; it works fine in a saved file. Would you say that failing to find in an unsaved file is a bug worth filing?

[EDIT] An afterthought: supposing the character color was other than Black - would this be more complex to manage by ink management? [/EDIT]

HTH

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

Peter Spier wrote:

 

'Morning, Peter.

 

That's also a pretty interesting idea, and I'm starting to think maybe even better than the one I came up with. You could define a spot color and alias it to Black, for example, and the color would show in layout mode and regular preview mode, but not overprint or seps previews (or , of course, actual output). You'd have to define the character color to Overprint Fill, as well, if you want it to overprint, because otherwise the aliased black will knock out while the default overprints.

Message was edited by: peter at knowhowpro

When I tested the GREP style and found that it failed to find any text variable, before I discovered a saved file was required, I tried Find to see if there was a difference between it and GREP style. IOW, was there a problem with finding a variable in InDesign CS6 that only affected my installation, or hasn't anyone tried this task and discovered it fails? My initial instinct was to use a GREP style, specifically because it required no user activation.

Of course, now the possible problem remaining is that some users might be bothered by the the displayed distinctive non-printing marking on text variables, so they might try to clear it by whatever creative operations they can think of.

I'll report the bug.

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

Peter Spier wrote:

 

Not sure which suggestion was managing the automation -- yours doesn't have a preflight problem, and the find/change approach requires the user to have a memory of their own.

 

As far as filing the bug, I'd say yes.

I should have been more specific: brand-new never-saved file on Mac OS 10.6.8. Not sure if Windows would matter. IIRC, when I tested in ID CS5.5, it worked because the test file was opened from an IDML that had been file exported from CS6; so, technically, there was an existing disk file, unlike the brand-new never-saved test in CS6. If you have a few spare cycles and are still interested, please try once more with a brand-new never-saved file.

Regards,

___________________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

I didn't replace prefs, but I had to restart the OS, and now in a retest, there's no failure in a new unsaved file.

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

Peter Spier wrote:

 

New never saved file here, too.

 

Replace your prefs and check again.