Is it possible to add an "annotation" layer based on text spot color?

[spencerg48423750]

Hello!

Before I ask, here's a little background: I'm working with a textbook that has two separate files for teachers and students (Teacher Edition and Student Edition, respectively). The teacher edition and the student edition share a lot of content. Namely, the TE contains an entire reproduction of an SE page, but with model student answers visible to the teacher. The model student answers (I'll call them anno) live in the SE InDesign files as text and are given the spot color TE_Anno. When actually printing both editions of this textbook, our production vendor uses Pitstop to remove the TE_Anno spot, ensuring that those model answers do not appear in the printed SE copies or their digital equivalents.

My question: Would it be possible to get all text of a particular spot color onto a separate layer in InDesign? I don't have access to Pitstop, so I'm not entirely sure it's possible to mimic the process of removing a particular spot color from an exported PDF. Normally when making publications like these, we would put any anno on a separate layer and export the PDF without that layer visible. Unfortunately, the files I'm working with don't have this set up, so I'm hoping there's something I can do to get the files in that kind of shape. Another issue is that almost every text box has both body text and anno.

Pardon the extremely long message and thanks for any feedback or alternative suggestions!

[John Mensinger]

spencerg48423750 wrote:

Another issue is that almost every text box has both body text and anno.

Hmmm...that's going to become THEE issue. If all instances of "anno' were in discreet frames, scripting their migration to a dedicated layer would probably be doable. But with both styles co-existing in a given frame, they can't be layer-segregated, especially not without losing their relative positions in the layout.

What you could do: Using the Find Format feature in Find/Change, search for all text of the color TE_Anno and change its Character Color to None. Export to PDF as the SE.

[Laubender]

Hi John,

speaking of "relative position" in the text flow:

With InDesign:

1. An annotation layer could hold an exact duplicate of all text frames. Simply duplicate the layer that is already there.

2. The spotcolored text on the other layer could be filled with fill color "none". A search/replace action where only one layer is visible and search is restricted to visible layers.

3. The non-spotcolor text on the annotation layer could be filled with fill color "none". Also through one or more find/replace actions.

Both layers visible:

Annotation only:

Student text only:

Doable, but is this workflow reasonable?

I really have problems to understand the question behind the idea to have an annotation layer.

Is the purpose of this to export two different PDFs, first with one layer visible, then with the other one visible only, and eliminating another step in the PDF workflow downstream? Because you want to minimize costs?

Regards,
Uwe

[vinny38]

Hi

Just like Uwe, I'm trying to figure out what is the idea behind your request.

Especially since your saying that your printer comes up with what seems to be an acceptable solution.

Questions:

Do you want two separate files:

One with 4-color process for Students and one with 4-color + 1 Spot for Teachers?

or

One with 4-color process for both versions and one with TE-Anno Spot only, to be added to the "common" file in the printing process?

Extra 2 questions:

is the TE-Anno black? if not, is the anno text always placed on a blank background?

If the answers of these 2 questions are NO, then you'll experience trapping problems while removing the spot color (in which case, I would much better understand your request...)

If you can make thinks a bit clearer, it should be easy to come up with a fast export solution, and you won't have to worry about layers.

regards

Vinny

[Danny Whitehead.]

How about temporarily editing the spot colour to be C0 M0 Y0 K0 process colour when exporting the PDF of the student edition? This would only work if it's all on a plain paper background.

[vinny38]

Danny Whitehead. wrote:

How about temporarily editing the spot colour to be C0 M0 Y0 K0 process colour when exporting the PDF of the student edition? This would only work if it's all on a plain paper background.

Danny,

the OP also talked about digital publications, so... careful ^^

[spencerg48423750]

Thanks for the answers, everyone!

I realize now that I should have clarified what end result I'm looking for--something that vinny38 picked up on--which is a PDF of the SE file without the anno at all, for digital users. Changing the character color to the none swatch or white produces PDFs with invisible, but still accessible type. I'm hoping to somehow put the anno on a non-printing layer or have InDesign ignore a specific color when exporting PDFs so that I can, hopefully, easily produce digital versions of my student edition files.

To answer some of your questions, vinny83, the files are all 2-color (black and a spot), and all instances of the anno are on a blank background. The TE_Anno color is built into the file as a "third" spot, but is actually just the same color with a different swatch name. This allows those with access to Pitstop to easily strip the TE_Anno content from the exported PDF. I'm often asked to recreate PDFs with minor adjustments for digital customers, but the presence of anno text blocks me from producing true student content 9 times out of 10.

Hopefully I didn't make things more confusing!

[vinny38]

Hi again.

Is by any chance your Annotation text always placed at the end of tout text frame ?

If so, then you could handle the problem using conditionnal text.

Protecting pdf is something to consider but it's not hard to "crack" protected pdf

[Laubender]

Hi Vinny,

indeed, conditional text would be perfect.
As long as the text is not flowing in one big story through all the pages.

Personally I would stay with a PDF "postflight" solution with PitStop Pro if conditional text is not possible and PDF for online use should be published.

On the other hand, if InDesign's Publish Online feature will be used for publishing digital the two layer solution would be possible as well, because Publish Online is only using SVG shapes for text. There is no live text in the HTML you could copy/paste.

Regards,
Uwe