Text box in master page

[a***@adobeforums.com]

Hi.

Please would someone tell me how to set up a text box in the master page which I can use in all the pages this master is applied to. When I set up a text box in the master it shows as an outline in the ordinary page this master is applied to, but I cannot put any content into it. I am using indesign 1.0 under XP

There must be a way to do this, I presume, and it must be really simple, but I have searched the help and the manual and googled, but as far as I can see it is never mentioned.

[P***@adobeforums.com]

You sound like an ex-Quark user. No offense is meant by that, simply that master items behave very differently in ID and it takes a little getting used to.

Master text frames can receive placed text by holding the loaded text cursor over the frame (it will change to include parentheses) and clicking. The frame will be automatically overridden onto the document page and the text will be accessible for editing.

What you can't do is type directly into the frame until it is overridden onto the document page. Ctrl + Shift Click with the selection tool to override, and it becomes accessible. If you do nothing more to the frame but add text, its size and position will remain linked to the master page and changes you make there will be reflected on the document page. Basically this works that any attribute not changed remains linked, so you can also play with colors and strokes.

Hope that helps.

For what it's worth, a lot of users, including myself, find master frames to be superfluous and a hindrance in most situations. You don't need them for autoflowing text unless the frame size is different from the page margins.

Peter

[K***@adobeforums.com]

Post by P***@adobeforums.com
For what it's worth, a lot of users, including myself, find master
frames to be superfluous and a hindrance in most situations.

I never found a way to make master page frames work at all. I came from
Quark, and I started by opening a Quark document in Indesign and trying
to work the same way as I had in Quark, and I spent a day fighting with
master page frames before I took someone's advice (probably Peter's),
dumped all the master page frames, and started autoflowing text from the
live page.

Before you autoflow 300 pages of frames, with nothing selected, go to
Text Frame Options (or whatever equals that in ID 1.0) and set
everything the way you want it. All new text frames (including
autoflowed frames) will use these settings.

BTW, you're not going to find a lot of people here who remember (or ever
used) ID 1.0.

[a***@adobeforums.com]

Many thanks, that solves the problem.

What is autoflowing text? Is that just flowing the text into an already linked series of pages, which I am familiar with, or is there a way to get all the text boxes linked without doing it manually? That would be great!

In fact I have been using indesign 1.0 since it first came out, and I just worked around this and other difficulties all these years, and finally decided enough was enough! In the early days I found Adobe support to be so obstructive that I basically gave up on the product, but I thought I would give it one last go before committing to something else permanently, probably scribus.

BTW the reason I want to use master frames is to have text boxes not only for the text but also for page headers and page numbers. If I am going about this the hard way please let me know!

Cheers.

Andrew

[K***@adobeforums.com]

Page headers and footers should go in frames on the master page. But
live text that flows from page to page should go in live frames linked
from page to page.

"Autoflow" means you start with one page, import text, and shift-click
the loaded cursor to place the text. This creates new pages with new
text frames until it reaches the end of the text. The book I'm working
on now is over 900 pages, all but the first one created by autoflowing a
Word file.

That said, I have no idea if ID 1.0 supported autoflow. I didn't get
serious with ID until CS.

I know nothing about Adobe support. But the support you can get here for
free from other users is fantastic.

[P***@adobeforums.com]

ID 1 really wasn't quite ready for prime time, so I still did most of my work in Quark back then. I made the switch at version 2.

My recollection is that Autoflow has been there since the beginning. You can also hold the Alt key to flow text from frame to frame (existing) without having to stop and reload the overset text by clicking the outport of the last frame each time.

As ken has said, put your header and page numbering stuff on the master page, with your margins set for the size of your main text frame.

When placing text you have a couple of options( I no longer have version 1 installed, so I can't verify this, but I believe it was true back then). You can use the text tool to draw a frame first. You can use a frame tool or shape tool to draw a frame and convert it to a text frame (more on that in a minute) or simply click the loaded cursor on the page and InDesign will create a frame on the fly -- a real timesaver. Making frames on the fly, the frame will fill the entire column width, with the top edge at the vertical position you clicked, and extending down to the bottom margin guide.

Edit: I left out that you can click and drag to draw the frame to size anywhere (works for images, too, which normally can be placed into existing frames, or a frame created on the fly, with ID placing at 100%, upper left corner where you click).

InDesign is as far as I know the only program out there that makes no distinction between shapes and frames (frames are made with tools with the X in them, and are hard coded with no fill color or stroke, and by default are expected to contain an image), while shapes are made by the sister tools without an X, and can have a stroke or fill set by default, useful for setting up keylines around photos, for example. Shapes are expected to have no content by default, but you can place any sort of content into either a frame or a shape, and you can switch from text to image, and back, without jumping through hoops.

Clicking in an empty frame or shape with the text tool makes it a text frame. Selecting an empty text frame with the selection tool allows you to place an image in it and convert it to an image frame. (If you place an image in a text frame with an active cursor it will be placed as an inline image in the text flow.)

If you get used to InDesign, you should really buy the current version. The feature set is lightyears ahead of what you have now.

Peter

[H***@adobeforums.com]

Post by P***@adobeforums.com
InDesign is as far as I know the only program out there that makes no distinction between shapes and frames

IIRC, Pagemaker works the same way.

Harbs

[a***@adobeforums.com]

Thanks very much, this all makes a lot of sense now. I can well see that the current version would be a delight, but I am *so* down on adobe for the way they treated me when indesign was new. As you say, 1.0 really was not ready for prime time, and as a result I felt that they should very much have put their best foot forward to help those of us who dived in, and my experience was of the very opposite. All the same, of course, no point in cutting off my digital nose to spite my commercial face! Plus the kind of support you have provided me with already makes the experience quite different.

Cheers.

Andrew.

[unknown]

Post by a***@adobeforums.com
I felt that they should very much have put their best foot forward to help those of us who dived in

Selling the upgrade for $29.00, basically the cost of shipping, pretty
much did just that.

Unfortunately, you're not likely to get much in the way of help with
something that old that almost nobody used...and those of us that did
are not likely to remember much except for the fact that it was pretty
much unusable.

Bob

[K***@adobeforums.com]

I gave up on software support in about 1992. The only good support I've
ever gotten has been from small companies (and, oddly enough, free and
open-source software authors). Much better support comes from other
users, in forums like this one. People who actually use the product know
much more about it than someone reading a script in Bangalore.

And, more and more, that seems to hold true for support in other areas.
I fixed my squeaky clothes dryer last month based on advice I found in
an online forum about appliances.

[P***@adobeforums.com]

IIRC, Pagemaker works the same way.




Well my memory isn't as good as yours that far back ( :) ) so I just fired up PM 7 to check. I can place an image into a shape, but not text.

You don't seem to be able to undo a place command, either.

Peter

[H***@adobeforums.com]

Well I guess my memory isn't that great after all! ;)

I just fired up my copy of PageMaker, (6.5 ME) and to place text in a
shape you first need to convert it to a frame...

We used to use window shades most of the time anyway in those days...

Harbs

[a***@adobeforums.com]

Hi Bob

Mine cost £200 in the UK, and that was a while back. Had I been offered a £180 rebate when it became clear how unfinished the software was in some regards I wouldn't be complaining!

Cheers

Andrew

[unknown]

Can we be clear about something? You're referring to InDesign 1.0 not
InDesign CS (3.0.x)?

Bob

[a***@adobeforums.com]

1.0

[P***@adobeforums.com]

I know I got my copy of ID 1 as a special offer for registered users of Pagemaker, and it was around $50, or maybe even $25. I suspect the offer might have been limited to US users, and it was a limited time special, if memory serves (which it probably doesn't).

Peter

[unknown]

My memory, which is totally unreliable, is that I got version one really
cheap as an upgrade from Pagemaker and version two really cheap as well,
sort of as an award for surviving version one in a production environment.

Costs have climbed with the rise in popularity and the latest upgrade
cost real money. Thank the good lord for a favourable exchange rate just
now.

[K***@adobeforums.com]

"Thank the good lord for a favourable exchange rate just
now."


Whose exchange rate? not Adobe's.

InDesign CS3 on the US Adobe site $699.
InDesign CS3 on the UK Adobe site £609+VAT=£715.58

$699 at NatWest's buy rate today £347.47
$699 converted by Xenon Laboratories "commissionless" rate £343.32

k

[unknown]

Indeed not Adobe's.