Char style to first word of paragraph

[SuzzyFlamingo]

Hi, Dear Friends!

I think this question has been addressed before, but I don't recall the final verdict.

Is there a way to have a certain PAR style cause the first word of that paragraph to have a certain character style? Or as a workaround to cause ID to format the first word of all, or some, paragraphs with a certain character style.

Thank you, and have a good day!
Susan Flamingo

[SuzzyFlamingo]

I needed this really fast for a job toady, so I "cheated" and asked ChatGPT and here is the answer it gave:

To use a grep style within the paragraph style and use the syntax: ^\w+ and apply the character style.

Actually worked.

I wonder if this community will someday be connected to an AI LLM system for instant answers to posted questions. It could be done in a day of programming, I think. But thanks to all anyway!

Thank you, and have a good day!
Susan Flamingo

[Eugene Tyson]

Yeh that's the way to do it.

You can also use Nested Styles and apply it the first word. 

Using ChatGPT is not cheating, it's working smart. 

I'd hate the forums to be automated messaging, it's a user to user forum. 

[TᴀW]

And in fact I think that nested styles is the better option. Paragraph GREP styles that are heavily used in a document can cause slowdown...

[BobLevine]

Right! GREP is a horrible idea for this and a nested style would take about a minute or two to create.

[Eugene Tyson]

My first instinct when people request GREP styles is to use Nested Styles. 

I don't know why everyone looks for GREP styles, I guess it's cool. But nested styles requires zero GREP knowledge and tends to work better.

Many a time I've suggested using Nested Styles, seems to be an overlooked and underused feature - not as 'cool' as GREP or something.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@SuzzyFlamingo

And ChatGPT gave you the wrong answer 😉

It's a tool - powerful tool - but it isn't smart. It's just a very advanced statistical model - it just guesses the right answer... 

[SuzzyFlamingo]

No. You are wrong.

It gave the exact answer that worked perfectly. (It could be scrapped from this forum, but it was correct!)

[rob day]

Hi @SuzzyFlamingo , You may or may not notice the performance hit using a GREP Syle, but when you can use a Nested Style instead it is always preferable—ChatGPT must have forgotten about the performance issues.

[Eugene Tyson]

@SuzzyFlamingo  You're absolutely right  ChatGPT did give a correct answer. Using a GREP style with ^\w+ to apply a character style to the first word of a paragraph is totally valid and works exactly as described. Just because there's another way to do it (like nested styles) doesn't make the GREP method wrong.

InDesign often gives us multiple tools to do the same thing, and which one you use can depend on your specific needs, deadlines, familiarity, document complexity and all that.

ChatGPT got it right for your use case, and it's good to see you got the result you needed fast. The solution worked. And that's the whole idea, isn't it?

For future reference and based on user experience, which ChatGPT doesn't have, Nested Styles are usually better for this kind of task, especially performance-wise. But there's nothing wrong with doing it either way. Your solution worked, and that’s what matters.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

No. You are wrong.

It gave the exact answer that worked perfectly. (It could be scrapped from this forum, but it was correct!)

By @SuzzyFlamingo

Yes, technically - as one of possible solutions - it's correct - but it should've suggested Nested Styles instead. 

[JR Boulay]

I've got a question for those who believe that nested styles do better and perform better than GREP styles:

what engine do you think is under the hood of nested styles?

GREP or magic?

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@JR Boulay

😄 Nested are much simpler in implementation and were first - so most likely two different "technologies".

You don't have dynamic comparison - just character/glyph or word.

[Eugene Tyson]

That's a great question

Nested Styles are built into InDesign’s text formatting engine as a simpler, rule-based system. They’re not powered by the full GREP engine. Instead, they use positional and word-based logic, things like "up to 1 word", "through 1 sentence", "up to a specific character", not regex parsing.

GREP Styles, on the other hand, use InDesign’s implementation of the Perl-Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) engine. It's heavier, more flexible, but also more processing-intensive, especially in documents with lots of live GREP rules.

So while both affect how styles are applied dynamically at render time, Nested Styles are a lightweight, custom-built rule set, and GREP Styles are regex-driven, which can mean a performance hit in complex documents.

[TᴀW]

Nested styles use the old "Seattle" magic...

[Scott Falkner]

Nested Styles predate GREP by several versions, so whatever algorithm Adobe uses to implement Nested Styles, it’s much simpler than GREP.

[Dirk Becker]

Back in Version 3 aka CS, Adobe published a copy of the generated documentation, a newer version of that still comes with the plug-in SDK downloads.

InDesign has indeed dedicated functions (in the compose scanner) to deal with words, considering the language and custom criteria what characters belong into a word. My first thought, but wrong here.

You're right that expressions are used, just not regular expressions.

The mechanism for nested styles and drop caps internally is called RunInStyle.

When we look at the attribute storing the "through 1 Word" nested style, the trigger expression is "(^w)1"

The expression for "through 1 Sentence" is "(^S)" and "up to 2 End Nested Style" is "[^p]2"

So, "through" is round brackets, "up to" is square brackets, followed by the count without curly brackets.

Very different from regular expressions.

This is an expression engine at work, but a much simpler one - therefor faster.

As @TᴀW calls it - Seattle magic.

[JR Boulay]

You're quibbling, whatever the implementation method, it's always regular expressions under the hood.

[Eugene Tyson]

Interesting take on it - can you share where you found this information? 

I am pretty sure that it's not using the same engine as GREP - but would love to know more about it and if you have any information or resources to share it'd be great to read up on. 

I thought I explained it wasn't quite well, but you have piqued my interest to learn more.

[JR Boulay]

Please, be lenient since English is not my native language.

I didn't mean to imply that they were the same engine, I just meant that no matter how you implement them, it's always regular expressions that are under the hood.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Please, be lenient since English is not my native language.

I didn't mean to imply that they were the same engine, I just meant that no matter how you implement them, it's always regular expressions that are under the hood.

By @JR Boulay

Why do you think that? 

If that would be true - then GREP Styles would be from the start - and probably instead of Nested. 

[Eugene Tyson]

Of course, no problem, just curious to your claims and wanted to know more. 

I think they might use expressions but different engines as @Dirk Becker points out expertly. 

Nested styles are a simpler implementation and works quicker. 

GREP is a different engine and more complex. 

But both use expressions but different engines.

[JR Boulay]

That's exactly what I meant. 🙂