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rigoliarts
Inspiring
February 5, 2013
Question

How to make fractions?

  • February 5, 2013
  • 3 replies
  • 43626 views

(Mac OS 10.6.8  CS5 about to upgrade to CS6)

I'm typesetting a cookbook and there are tons of fractions including 1/3, 1/4, 3/4, 1/2. Please tell me there's a key command to use to create fractions. Help!

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3 replies

Participating Frequently
February 5, 2013

Fractions are one of the many features in the commercial Blatner Tools InDesign plug-in from dtptools.com. There's a free trial.

HTH

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

BobLevine
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 5, 2013
Steve Werner
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 5, 2013

If you choose a OpenType font (there are several included with InDesign and the Creative Suite), then you can apply the OpenType fractions attribute. For example: Minion Pro or Adobe Garamond Pro.

Select the fraction with the Type tool. Then choose OpenType > Fractions from the Control panel menu or the Character panel menu to create an arbitrary fraction from the type. This can be included into a character style to speed up the process.

rigoliarts
Inspiring
February 26, 2013

Steve, Your suggestion  seems like a good solution but not all of the fractions appear (1/3, 2/3) and I'm using an open type font. Also, I notice that some of the options in the charachter panel are in brackets. What does that mean? See attached screen shot below.

Thanks.

Steve Werner
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 26, 2013

The designer of each OpenType font can choose which attributes they choose to implement. The particular font you're using, Parisine Claire, hasn't set up the font do use more than the minimally included fraction glyphs. (You can see the exact fractions included in the Glyphs panel.) When InDesign puts attributes in brackets, it means they're not available.

To get more fractions, you need to use another method of generating them or choose a different font.