Inspiring

Question

It is possible to generate different captions?

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
April 8, 2020
4 replies
947 views

The menu seems to accept only one solution: above/below/right/left.

What about this kind of documents where more options are required? This is possible?

How to

This topic has been closed for replies.

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi Nigel,

yes. But what our OP needs is a rule-based approach that works in one go:

Tables: Caption above

Figures: Caption below

Hm. Are the tables placed table graphics?

Or InDesign tables?

With InDesign tables the auto caption feature will not work at all.

FWIW: One could imagine a function that is reading out metadata and that is tying a object style based on keywords that are found in the metadata of a placed image or graphic.

A custom script is more flexible. It could position caption frames according to all possible rules one could come up with.

Also with a part of name of a graphic. If a placed graphic has "table" in its file name the caption would be placed above, if the placed graphic has "figure" in its file name the caption would go below. Etc.pp.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

P

palala fogAuthor

Inspiring

Mr Laubender,

It is exactly the point: just to have many captions options, not just one.

something like paragraph/character/object styles!
for the straight citizen thinking in scripts is out of question.

thanks.

N

nigelfrench

Community Expert

The Caption Setup dialog allows you to specify an offset. With some trial and error, making this a negative amount you can position the caption on top of the image. What the Caption Setup dialog is lacking is the ability to apply an Object Style at the same time. However, you can do this in a separate step and the text insets and vertical alignment of the object style can give you another level of control over how the caption is placed relative to the image. If you choose to generate the captions to their own layer, you can select all the contents of this layer and apply the object style as a second step.

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi,

how would you decide if a caption is above or below an image?

Is there a common rule for a specific design? If yes, this could be scripted. If not, how should InDesign know?

And: You always can move a caption around or rotate it after the caption was added.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

P

palala fogAuthor

Inspiring

Uwe,

It is decided by publishing rules. For example, here, tables have captions above, graphs below.

Mean: here, for me, ID only have one choice for generate captions: is like having styles...

Once decided it is only one option (four locations, of course) but only one.

I couldn't create a second method. Just manually.

The idea is apply a shortcut to each generated caption, as the layout requires. For the moment the default is only one position for a shortcut and pre-established preferences.

Thanks.

BobLevine

Community Expert

Okay, I'll bite...where else would they go?

P

palala fogAuthor

Inspiring

Mr Levine, thanks for your time.

***

PD. I should appreciate your reply plenty of humour and slang, as very «nice», for this cruelests months, quoting T.E. Eliot.

Of course the Most Valuable Participant in this forum, answering with questions, without intention, of course, perhaps is killing a thread that is a real problem for ID users. In another post you mentioned that Indesign is not the right tool for making catalogues (?) and now your opinion is that ID is not appropriated to make academic stuff as papers or magazines. (?). Perhaps you could advise us on both situations about the most valuable software to solve our little problems. Please, not FrameMaker... not Quark, for the moment.

BobLevine

Community Expert

You said captions can only be left, right, top and bottom.

Again, I ask you...where else would you put them?

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded