Anchored text boxes size on Export?

Report · Sep 06, 2023

I have a medical book with lots of images and captions. The author / creator put all captions and notes in separate text boxes, and so as I'm trying to prepare this for export to epub, I am running into problems. I've just been adding the captions into the main text thread which works fine, but for some of his notes, there is also a stroke around the text box, so I would love to just anchor those to the main body text to keep the text frame options and stroke. This is what always happens to it when I do, though (see image), it still reflows the text but on only half the screen, no matter what size screen I'm looking at it on. I'm viewing it on a Kindle previewer, but any other app or viewer does the same thing. Any ideas?

Report · Sep 06, 2023

Style issues are fairly readily fixed for EPUB export, but structural problems — such as having text in many unlinked boxes — are not.

If you are exporting to fixed-page EPUB (not recommended, for many reasons), it may be possible to fix some of these issues through style fixes and some CSS (export-time style code). FXL resists most export/post-export tinkering.

If you want to export to reflowable EPUB, the recommended format, the entire book may have to be rebuilt to make it (more or less) one text flow with all objects such as images and text boxes anchored in place.

There is probably no simple solution. Sort of hacking a document together using any and all methods works for print, and often for PDF, but when an export to e-book format is needed... the document must be as close to technically perfect, in structural and other ways, as possible.

Report · Sep 06, 2023

Thanks for replying! I appreciate it! That's kind of what I was afraid of. I was so close to having it all! I can have a note in a text box, with a stroke of my choice, reflowable text, in the right location in the text, but I have to be OK with it on half the screen. It is like it thinks it is one of two columns, or something. Maybe I can convince the client that at least this is better than making the text box an image? Thanks again.

Report · Sep 06, 2023

Getting rid of the stroke is fairly easy, I think. See if any one object style is associated with the text boxes... I will bet pilcrows to parrots that they are all "Default Text Frame." In any case, with nothing selected, click on Default Text Frame in the Object Styles list, be sure any fill or border is set to "no color," and then right-click/Redefine style. That will remove the border that somehow got set as a base style.

If that doesn't work, there is one simple CSS code snippet that will (and I seem to recall ID sometimes defaulting to a 1pt border on things without it being a part of the style, so that may be it). See if clearing the styles helps, and if not...

Also, a great deal depends on teh EPUB reader. They vary enormously on how they render files, and their settings may be one column or two. I recommend using Calibre as a generic, base-version reader to proof things. Most others have... issues.

The width issue may be fixable as well; ID does laboriously preserve set or effective width on frames, so if they are 2 inches wide in the doc, tehy will be exported at 2 effective inches wide in the EPUB. That can be fixed with either styling in the document or another CSS code snippet.

Report · Sep 06, 2023

I'll open it is calibre and see if I can mess with the code on those. I actually want to keep the stroke, just not the width.

Actually, it doesn't seem to matter what I put the width of the frame at in the text frame options or just stretching the text frame: once I exported it, it always is exactly like the image above, and that includes in Calibre. I'm going to keep messing with it, thanks for your help, I'll let you know if any solutions present themselves.

Report · Sep 06, 2023

A CSS width definition will almost certainly fix it, and allow you to make it a proportial width for nicer offset. Sometimes there's no other way to get a desired result out of ID.