Skip to main content
Matthew A
Matthew A
Inspiring
August 25, 2022
Question

Text frame with a left or right side border only...

  • August 25, 2022
  • 5 replies
  • 6056 views

Heres an example layout I have been testing in order to get to grips with layout rules...

Orange lines = manually placed, happy to keep dong these as-is.

Green line — this is manually placed but this really seems like a dumb solution, I woudl love some advice as to the most flexible / solid layout solution to add rules to either the left or right side of a text box!



I could do this with custom paragraph styles, using a right-side para border, but it would be MUCH easier and flexible if there was a way to control text frame borders!! Then we coudl just use object styles...

Has anyone come across a solution (maybe even a plugin?) that can give us fine-grained control over borders?


thanks for your time!



    This topic has been closed for replies.

    5 replies

    L
    Community Expert
    LaubenderCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 25, 2022

    @rob day said: "It could also be scripted by drawing the line and grouping it with the text frame. The creation and positioning of the line would be easy, develping a dialog to handle the color, stroke, and offsets would be more work."

     

    Hm. Look into Marc Autret's InGutter 2 script to see how much work that can be:

     

    Getting Started with InGutter 2 for InDesign CS4-CC [UPDATE]
    Marc Autret, July 09, 2013

    https://www.indiscripts.com/post/2012/09/getting-started-with-ingutter2

     

    Regards,
    Uwe Laubender
    ( Adobe Community Professional )

      Matthew A
      Matthew AAuthor
      Inspiring
      August 25, 2022

      Thanks for all the thoughts here!

      I have seen theres a live feature request that covers this issue — please add your votes too!

      https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/20396803-allow-different-coloured-weight-strokes-for-sides#comments

      rob day
      Community Expert
      rob dayCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      August 25, 2022

      Then we coudl just use object styles...

       

      Hi @Matthew A , Seems like you should be able to set up an Object Style that includes a right only Paragraph Border:

       

      Matthew A
      Matthew AAuthor
      Inspiring
      August 25, 2022

      Hi Rob — sure, that is what I am doing at the moment... but... imagine we have two or three useful para styles for a given text box in a 3-col layout... lets say body text, intro paragraph and a quote style...

      Depending on what we do with the layout we would then potentially need a left + right + both-sides para style for each 'main' paragraph style version. So nine different paragraph styles needed where usually Id only have three!

      And this isnt even a particularly detailed layout, you can see how we'd end up multiplying paragraph styles very rapidly here... which I am fully expecting to do!

      It would be SO much simpler if we could simply assign borders per edge instead of the rather basic Indesign tools we currentyl have. Or if we could perhaps assign border on the object-level...?

      rob day
      Community Expert
      rob dayCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      August 25, 2022

      Do a feature request.

       

      It could also be scripted by drawing the line and grouping it with the text frame. The creation and positioning of the line would be easy, develping a dialog to handle the color, stroke, and offsets would be more work.

      TᴀW
      TᴀW
      Legend
      August 25, 2022

      If you need a line on one side only, you could use a gradient fill with both tab stops set at 99%:

      (Actually, this would also work if you needed 2 lines, one on the left and one on the right, or one on the top and one on the bottom, but not if you need 3 lines or 2 perpendicular lines. And 4 lines is, of course, built in.)

      Matthew A
      Matthew AAuthor
      Inspiring
      August 25, 2022

      Interesting tactic!
      But that would not allow me to set the line to text ascender / baselines... So far paragraph borders seem to be the most flexible option and accurate, although I havent yet looked at tables...



      James Gifford—NitroPress
      James Gifford—NitroPress
      Legend
      August 25, 2022

      Yeah, as long as you set up the paragraph border styles carefully, and probably have right/left/none versions of each style in the flow, it should work fine. Just complicated and messy.

       

      —

        L
        Community Expert
        LaubenderCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        August 25, 2022

        "Orange lines = manually placed, happy to keep dong these as-is."

         

        Hi @Matthew A ,

        keep them manually placed. Also the orange ones.

        Well. Perhaps show the page with frame edges visible and invisible text showing as well.

         

        Regards,
        Uwe Laubender
        ( Adobe Community Professional )

        Matthew A
        Matthew AAuthor
        Inspiring
        August 25, 2022

         

        Here goes...

        James Gifford—NitroPress
        James Gifford—NitroPress
        Legend
        August 25, 2022

        Well, inherently (that is, directly connected to the layout element) it can be done easily... on export, using CSS control. But that doesn't help much in the layout or for any form of print.

         

        Manual lines are one solution and the only really flexible one. Paragraph borders could be used but it would get complicated (messy) if there is more than one style or if there are illustrations, as you have.

         

        I'm not sure even script level control has that granularity... but cue the wizards anyway.

         

        —

        Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
        Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices