One hundred and thirty-one folks in attendance. Things were a little odd since the main sound system was down. Sadly, there was no way we could play the music that was cued up, so dancing will have to wait until our next meeting.
After pizza and chatting, we settled in for our dual-focus-segment meeting. Steve led off the discussion by explaining the basics of both character and paragraph styles and when each are used.
Paragraph styles are the basic style tools to form text on a page. These styles should contain basic information such as font, size, leading, indentation, and so forth.
Character styles are the exception within a paragraph that has been styled. When you make a change in the paragraph without using a style, a “+” will appear after the paragraph style name, indicating that there has been a change in the paragraph that is not a part of a predefined style.
Then we got into the exciting area of nested styles — character styles being used within paragraph styles automatically! By messing with tabs and style definitions, we were able to achieve many cool and improbable arrangements and some intellectual curiosities — most time saving applications (e.g., classified ads, leading paragraphs, fancy drop-caps, etc.). Folks around the room chimed in with other uses and ideas as well.
Our break went a little longer than normal, but we got back into the thick of things with the InDesign® book feature. Steve demonstrated the essentials of creating books, and mentioned this as a way to create documents of varying page size. We discussed pagination (and repagination as "chapters" are rearranged), printing, and exporting to PDF. Perhaps most importantly, we investigated the way styles and swatches can be synchronized across the many documents in a book. Heather Wenzel of REI quietly offered a clever tip (as she often does) on how to use synchronization to help get rid of persistent unwanted swatches.
Books are a wonderful way of collecting files into one place for consistency. After making a book, you can drag and drop or select and load files into a book. If you have a template file, by making that file the selected file (indicated by the mark to the left of the file) you can synchronize your files so all of the files will contain the styles, swatches, trap settings, and TOC information defined in the selected file. Other features such as autopagination, printing/exporting a whole book (or a part of it), and preflight options for the entire book in one place make the book function a tool worth exploring.
Steve then offered the room to whoever had a tip to share on these and related topics. Our members slowly warmed up to the notion and began to relate ways in which they use both books and styles. Then Ashley Mitchell, Adobe InDesign Engineer (and the greatest guy in the world, we hear) offered insight into these topics, especially styles, with cool shortcuts, an Easter egg or two, and really practical advice, all offered in his easygoing, soft-spoken manner.
