1 Correct answer
Hi @ibnabouna:
This is a challenging layout. The answer is no to being able to span a heading across three separate text frames. Span only works when you have one text frame with multiple columns defined within it. You could go old-school and draw one new frame that spans all three columns on the page and then have three separate frames, for one for each language underneath, as you mentioned.
As for the automatic spill-over, that only going to work if you have three separate frames, one for
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Replies
Hi @ibnabouna:
This is a challenging layout. The answer is no to being able to span a heading across three separate text frames. Span only works when you have one text frame with multiple columns defined within it. You could go old-school and draw one new frame that spans all three columns on the page and then have three separate frames, for one for each language underneath, as you mentioned.
As for the automatic spill-over, that only going to work if you have three separate frames, one for each language. Otherwise, there is going to be a lot of cutting and pasting to try to keep the languages in the correct columns after edits.
Neither option is ideal, but I'd chose the one I'm showing below because it would be slightly easier to control. If you follow the text threads/frame colors you can see how I have the frames connected. I'm making the assumption that you're going have heads in the middle of a page which would be the most problematic. Because the column lengths will never match up when you have multiple languages, you can use column breaks to force the text to hop over the middle-of-the-page heads and onto the next threaded frame.
~Barb
Hi @ibnabouna, I was intrigued by this problem and I've written a script idea called "Align Paragraphs". It's a slightly complicated set up, as you can imagine, but I'll attach a sample document that you can use to see what I've done. I've put a bit of documentation in the script itself, too.
The basic idea is to mark paragraphs in "AlignMe" paragraph style and the script will try to align them vertically. In my sample document I've also added an anchored text frame (blue) in the English column that spans all three columns—this has an object style applied so it's easy to edit. In my sample document I've left the "AlignMe" text frames (pink) visible, but you could make them invisible, or just send those frames to the back. The script looks through each story (English, Hebrew, and Greek) and adjusts the "AlignMe" headings so they will align to the one that sits lowest in the text flow. Then it moves on to the next set of three headings.
The script can be used multiple times, for example you could run it again after making some text changes. However, in a case where the script has added frame breaks (page 2 of my sample document) that will cause it to push those headings to the next page again, so you'll need to manually remove the frame break characters if this happens.
Oh, and a super important thing is you'll need to add a script label to each of the text frames on the first page (just the first page frames) and label them "English", "Hebrew", and "Greek" to match the script. Go to Window > Utilities > Script Label.
And don't forget to download the attached sample indesign document. It will help I think.
- Mark
And here's the script:
/*
Align Paragraphs
for Adobe Indesign 2022
by m1b,
here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/3-column-multilingual-book-with-spanning-headers/m-p/12925006
Will attempt to align paragraphs vertically on a page.
Example setup:
1. Indesign doc with multiple stories
that are threaded across pages adjacently
(see linked thread at community.adobe.com)
2. At least one text frame of each story must
be labelled (eg. "English", "Hebrew" etc.)
3. All text frames first baseline offset must
be "Leading" (to handle first line aligning)
4. All headings to be aligned should have the
"AlignMe" paragraph style applied.
5. Script will cause all "AlignMe" paragraphs
to align at baselines, either by
- altering spaceBefore, or if first line,
- altering leading of first character
(script will add frame breaks to attempt
to place paragraphs on the same page)
Note: as per adobe community thread attached document,
see option of using anchored text frames for
frame-spanning headings.
Known limitations:
- Truly horrifying lack of testing and
error handling! If people show interest
I'm happy to make improvements though.
- if script is run multiple times on same
document it doesn't remove frame breaks
that it may have added at an earlier run
*/
function main() {
var doc = app.activeDocument,
// thread labels match with
// script labels on text frames
threads = [
{ label: 'English' },
{ label: 'Hebrew' },
{ label: 'Greek' }
],
alignParagraphStyleName = 'AlignMe';
// grep to find paragraph styles
app.findGrepPreferences = NothingEnum.NOTHING;
app.changeGrepPreferences = NothingEnum.NOTHING;
app.findGrepPreferences.appliedParagraphStyle = alignParagraphStyleName;
// collect objects in threads
for (var h = 0; h < threads.length; h++) {
// add labelled text frames
threads[h].textFrame = getPageItems(doc, RegExp(threads[h].label), true);
// add story
threads[h].story = threads[h].textFrame.parentStory;
// add headings
threads[h].headings = threads[h].story.findGrep();
}
// sanity check
var errors = [],
numberOfHeadings = threads[0].headings.length;
for (var h = 1; h < threads.length; h++) {
if (threads[h].headings.length != numberOfHeadings)
errors.push('Thread "' + threads[h].label + '" has ' + threads[h].headings.length + ' headings ("' + threads[0].label + '" has ' + numberOfHeadings + ' headings).');
}
if (errors.length > 0) {
alert('Error:\n' + errors.join('\n'));
return;
}
app.scriptPreferences.measurementUnit = MeasurementUnits.POINTS;
// "frameScale" is just a way of evaluating the "height" of a heading
// such that a heading with baseline height of only 100 but
// textFrameIndex of 1 is considered "bigger" than a heading
// with baseline height of 900 but textFrameIndex of 0.
// Script would evaluate 10000100 > 900 and correctly determine that
// the 100 baseline is "bigger" than the 900 baseline
var frameScale = 10000000;
// align headings
for (var h = 0; h < numberOfHeadings; h++) {
var maxYValue = 0;
for (var i = 0; i < threads.length; i++) {
var frameIndex = getTextsTextFrameIndexInStory(threads[i].headings[h], threads[i].story),
yValue = frameIndex * frameScale + threads[i].headings[h].baseline;
if (maxYValue < yValue)
maxYValue = yValue;
}
// split the frame index and yValue
var maxY = maxYValue % frameScale,
maxFrameIndex = Math.floor(maxYValue / frameScale);
aligningLoop:
for (var i = 0; i < threads.length; i++) {
// align heading by adding frame breaks
var heading = threads[i].headings[h],
headingTextFrame = heading.parentTextFrames[0],
frameIndex = getTextsTextFrameIndexInStory(heading, threads[i].story),
deltaFrameIndex = maxFrameIndex - frameIndex;
while (deltaFrameIndex > 0) {
threads[i].story.characters[heading.characters[0].index - 1].insertionPoints[0].contents = SpecialCharacters.FRAME_BREAK;
deltaFrameIndex--;
}
// align heading
var firstLineInFrame = heading.lines[0].index == headingTextFrame.lines[0].index;
if (firstLineInFrame) {
// align heading by adjusting first
// character's leading; this is
// necessary because spaceBefore
// doesn't affect first lines
// note: textFrame's first baseline offset
// must be set to "Leading" for this to work
var deltaY = maxY - heading.baseline;
heading.characters[0].leading += deltaY;
}
else {
// align heading by adjusting spaceBefore
var deltaY = maxY - heading.baseline;
heading.spaceBefore += deltaY;
}
}
}
function getTextsTextFrameIndexInStory(text, story) {
var textFrame = text.parentTextFrames[0];
for (var i = 0; i < story.textContainers.length; i++) {
if (textFrame == story.textContainers[i])
return i;
}
}
function getPageItems(doc, matcher, onlyFirst) {
// matcher must be regex to match script label
var items = doc.pageItems,
found = [];
for (var i = 0; i < items.length; i++) {
if (matcher.test(items[i].label)) {
if (onlyFirst)
return items[i]
found.push(items[i]);
}
}
return found;
}
}
app.doScript(main, ScriptLanguage.JAVASCRIPT, undefined, UndoModes.ENTIRE_SCRIPT, "Align Paragraphs");
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