Text Background Shading

[_radue_]

In MS Word 2003 & similarly in 2007 I can easily use "Format | Borders and Shading" to quickly apply background shading to any selected text. This is extremely handy for emphasizing key phrases in certain types of sales documents. FrameMaker doesn't have an equivalent feature and I always hate having to revert back to MS Word when I need this feature.

I have posted a 'Feature Request' and would like to invite as many of you as possible to do likewise to increase our prospects for eventually getting this feature. I always use paragraph & character styles and it would seem trivial for FrameMaker to add this feature with all the capabilities they already have. I currently use FM 8.04 and have been using FM for about 18 years and sure would like to see this feature in a future release. So can any of you help spread the word? Thanks.

[MichaelKazlow]

I have seen what you describe on many an ad copy. All I can say is
tacky---very tacky. However, you can place the text you want into a
textframe and place whatever shading, border you want. A work around
yes, but it works.

Mike

[_radue_]

Mike, but how do you use the text frame technique for only a few words or phrase within a sentence? -- Roger

[MichaelKazlow]

You create a text frame. Select the Frame with the graphics tool panel
open. You can change the color of the border using the pen settings and
the fill pattern for the shading. Cut the frame from your document and
paste it where you want it to be part of the sentence and it will move
with the flow. You will have to manually adjust the baseline to match
your text. You manually move the text field if you want to leave it free
floating.

Mike

[JuleeBruce]

Another way you can do this is to type the paragraph in Word and apply your background shading. Then, copy the whole paragraph from Word and paste it straight into FrameMaker (not in an anchored frame). For some reason or another, Word features are available when you paste them this way.

Keep in mind that there are several drawbacks to using this method. FrameMaker does not search or spell check inside of this text frame, and most HTML converters treat this text frame as a graphic.

[Arnis Gubins]

Julee,

This may not be a reliable way to try to do this. When you paste this way, in a default FM configuration, the paragraph gets inserted as an OLE object. These are quite flakey in FM and with some installations, such as XP SP3 upgrades, OLE is broken and you won't get anything.

Also, if the user has changed their clipboard pasting priorities in the maker.ini, then they'll probably lose the background anyway.

[Guest]

Thank you for this feature request.  This feature is also requested by us. It is important, however, that it is fully functional and supported for structured documents too. That means that there has to be a way to express Text Backgroud Shading via EDD Layout Rules (Text or Paragraph properties).

None of the workarounds described above will work with structured documents.

Frank Steimke

[Craig McLaughlin]

Resurrecting this old thread, I have found (while tacky) the need to highlight (shade) a selected phrase or set of characters rather than an entire paragraph in InDesign. Is this possible? It's now 2018 and we've upgraded numerous versions of InDesign since this thread was started. Hoping CC 2019 has added this feature. Thanks.