XY measurements from top left corner of item?

[P***@adobeforums.com]

Okay here's one thing that's driving me nuts in InDesign. I'm a former Quark user who recently switched. I absolutely love InDesign! But here's a preference I want to change:

When I select an item sometimes I want to manually enter XY coordinates for where I want to position it. In Quark, the XY coordinates are set to be the left-hand topmost side of the item. In InDesign it's the other way, and that's driving me crazy. I end up having to do math to figure out how to position something exactly. Can anyone tell me how to change this setting?

I hope this question makes sense.

Thanks, Phyllis

[K***@adobeforums.com]

You can select any of the nine co-ordinate positions on the mimic by just clicking on it.

k

[P***@adobeforums.com]

Okay thanks I've tried that, but it's very tedious. As soon as I choose the top left point and change its X coordinate I then have to direct-select it again before I can change the Y coordinate (otherwise it's reverted back to the right-hand-bottom-most method of calculating). Anybody know an easier way? I want clicking on the item as a whole to always give me the left-top-most corner reading (instead of its opposite).

Thanks for the help,
Phyllis

[K***@adobeforums.com]

"As soon as I choose the top left point and change its X coordinate I then have to direct-select it again before I can
change the Y coordinate (otherwise it's reverted back to the right-hand-bottom-most method of calculating). "


That's certainly not how it works here. Select an object, click any of the corner, side or centre positions in the mimic
diagram in the control panel, and just type in the X and Y co-ordinates. The object moves.

The selected corner in the mimic stays selected.

k

[P***@adobeforums.com]

Oh duh, I did that wrong. Still new to InDesign. I clicked a corner of the actual object, not the mimic. The mimic is great! Now I just need to see if it'll stay on the top left. Weird that its original default was bottom right. Nobody reads that way!

Thanks this is great!
Phyllis

[K***@adobeforums.com]

The mimic stays as you last used it. Select the top left and it stays selected until you select somewhere else.

k

[K***@adobeforums.com]

Being able to change the proxy can be very useful in certain situations.
Most of the time I want it in the upper left. But sometimes I change it
to upper center when I want to precisely center an object in relation to
another object without doing the math. Like when I have a text frame and
I want to center a turned figure+caption on top of the text frame. Just
set the proxy for center, choose the text frame and copy the X number,
choose the figure and the caption, and paste the X number. Perfectly
centered.

[P***@adobeforums.com]

I appreciate your help. That saves me a lot of annoyance.

Thanks, Phyllis

[O***@adobeforums.com]

Hi Ken, Phyllis,

For whatever it's worth, we call it the "Proxy". Or, at least, we have since Debra Borgatti (now Kosky) first came up with it for the Control palette in PageMaker 4.2 (I helped, a little bit, with the design).

Thanks,

Ole

[K***@adobeforums.com]

She needed help to arrange nine little squares ? Sorry Ole, couldn't resist it. The holiday season is kicking in.

Yes, proxy. That's one of those words that escapes me when I need it most. I referred to it as a mimic because
thingumybub didn't seem to do it justice.

And the little squares, of course are Reference Points.

k

[O***@adobeforums.com]

Ken Grace wrote: "She needed help to arrange nine little squares ? Sorry Ole, couldn't resist it. The holiday season is kicking in."

Understood! Having the reference points on the proxy correspond the the points on the selected object seems obvious now because we did it then. As far as I know, it hadn't been done before--at least in a page layout application. In addition, the reference points on the proxy in PageMaker did more than the ones in InDesign can do (when Adobe adapted the proxy for other products, they missed the other features--or decided they weren't important).

Did you know that you can select reference points with the numeric keypad when the proxy is active?

Thanks,

Ole

[K***@adobeforums.com]

"Did you know that you can select reference points with the numeric keypad when the proxy is active?"

How does that work Ole? If I select an object on the page and prod the keypad nothing changes on the proxy. Or am I
misinterpreting.

k

[H***@adobeforums.com]

Hi Ole.

Out of curiousity: What did the one in PM do that the one in InDesign
doesn't?

Harbs

[P***@adobeforums.com]

Great tip, thanks!

(I was referring to the centering tip, but it's nice to learn all about it.)

Phyllis

[O***@adobeforums.com]

Hi Ken,

You have to make the Proxy active--I usually do this by tabbing into it from another of the Control panel fields. For me, that usually means Ctrl-Alt-` (to activate the last panel field used--for me, that's usually a Control panel field), then Shift-Tab until the dotted line appears around the proxy.

Thanks,

Ole

[K***@adobeforums.com]

Thanks Ole. I got it to work but I can't see me using it. Do you find any benefit?

k

[j***@adobeforums.com]

I've seen that -- in PM, you could click a selected square again, and it would expand into little arrows.

.. can't really remember what it was for, tho'. (Guessing: scaling?)

[D***@adobeforums.com]

In PM's proxy, the "anchor" point had two states. It could be the anchor or it could be the point that moved in response to the action. I sorely miss that latter ability, but I am one of a very small number of InDesign users who feel that way.

Dave

[H***@adobeforums.com]

Post by D***@adobeforums.com
It could be the anchor or it could be the point that moved in response to the action. I sorely miss that latter ability,

Oh. that's right... I wasn't sure why I had repeatedly thought that the
transform functions worked from the proxy points. I must have been
remembering from PageMaker. (Or was I?) Well, I would welcome that
functionality too!

Harbs

[AlFerrari]

Ole, or anyone else,

Does Adobe have some ownership of that proxy interface device, or can any commercial software adopt it? I sure would like to see it incorporated into the Preps template editor which has a poor interface for laying out pages on press sheets.

Thanks,

Al

[P***@adobeforums.com]

Ole wrote:

As far as I know, it hadn't been done before--at least in a page layout
application.




Before there was software, voodoo dolls were being used as proxies.

Regards,

Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices