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1. Re: Table-like layout (the proper way)
Willi Adelberger Aug 20, 2016 10:12 PM (in response to JohnStern)1 person found this helpfulDo it with a table. What problems do you expect? InDesign tables can be nested countless, contain images and the design, including used paragraph styles can be saved in Table, Cell and Paragraph Styles.
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2. Re: Table-like layout (the proper way)
jane-e Aug 21, 2016 5:10 AM (in response to JohnStern)1 person found this helpfulJohnStern wrote:
I want to find a way to create a table-like layout like this:
...
The first way is just to use a table. But as I understand, that may bring some problems in the future. Why? Because, as I think, the document is not intented to be a large table, and so, there are may be some problems with images, nested tables, references and TOC. Since I'm novice in InDesign, I'm not sure, but I think it's true.
To answer the other questions:
• Yes, you can generate a TOC from styles used in a table.
• Unasked, but maybe an issue: you cannot create an automatic footnote for text in a table. If you need to do this, there are some workarounds. Ask in a separate post or search the archives.
Pro tip: create a small sample as you did above. Test everything you need to test.
Also: use Paragraph styles, Cell styles, Table styles, and Character styles throughout. Remove all overrides.
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3. Re: Table-like layout (the proper way)
Laubender Aug 22, 2016 12:59 AM (in response to Willi Adelberger)Willi Adelberger wrote:
Do it with a table. What problems do you expect?…
Hi Willi,
yes I'd do this kind of work also with tables. Perhaps.
It will depend on the structure of the actual text and if the customer is prone of doing last minute changes.
The thing is, that table cells cannot break between text frames (MS Word tables can do this).
Depending on the length of texts within the individual cells, that missing feature would require some extra work, if the table flows from page to page and the bottom of the last row on every page should be in alignment with every other last row.
I'd do that fine tuning at the very last stage of the document where contents and formatting of the text is finalized.
Problem with that? The customer likes to see the final layout with a first draft perhaps and then doing changes.The alternative?
Using two stories, two flows of text frames throughout the document, that resemble the two columns of a table and let them flow through the pages. To get the right alignment of the corresponding texts add paragraph signs. But here we have the same problem: If the customer is doing changes, we have to rework the number of paragraph signs added.Regards,
Uwe -
4. Re: Table-like layout (the proper way)
Obi-wan Kenobi Aug 22, 2016 5:22 AM (in response to Laubender)Hi Uwe,
I've discussed about this point with Kasyan Servetsky a long time ago!
We thought a good way was to effectively play with 2 stories and a script that extracts the Y-Offset of a para placed in Story 1 (marked with, e.g. a non-joiner at its beginning) and applies "space-before/invisible para rule above" to the corresponding para in the Story 2 (marked too with, e.g. a non-joiner at its beginning).
(^/)