Composite object styles, is it possible to lock the style of an object?

[dublove]

Sometimes it's necessary to apply a style A to the caption, another style B to the image, then combine them and apply a style C. That's what I'm thinking of with composite object styles.

Here it is required to lock the A and B object styles, so that C can not affect the A and B.

This is just an idea, hopefully one day it will be discovered and created.

Also expect the graphic wrap around to one day work for the text above the anchor point.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

[Abhishek Rao · Accepted solution]

Hello @dublove,

This sounds like a good idea and could be beneficial in the scenarios like you mentioned. I recommend creating a UserVoice for it and sharing the link here in this thread. Interested users can upvote it, helping us prioritize the request. You'll also receive updates as progress is made.

^

Abhishek

[dublove]

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/49369406-co...

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[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@dublove

It's already possible - and way more - in my ID-Tasker - even with the free version.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

While there are some nuances here that would be nice, pretty much all of this is achievable with the existing feature set.

While it's true that an object with style PHOTO and an object with style CAPTION applied will lose those tags when grouped and an object style is applied to the group — an overall construct I use for book images fairly often, to set things like spacing for the group instead of from component frames — it's fairly trivial to just reverse (or repeat) the process. Set up the PHOTO and CAPTION frames as desired, group, apply the SPACING style to the group, then take a moment to re-apply PHOTO and CAPTION. Not elegant, but the only consequence I can see is that the instance of SPACING will show an override indicator.

And as I see it, that's entirely consistent with how ID manages stacked and nested and combined styles overall.

Unless there's an aspect of this process I'm missing, something that would benefit from maintaining "pure" nested Object styles, it seems good enough, even scriptable, I think. I'd be concerned about complexity and collisions trying to nest object styles while keeping each's parameters maintained as "clear" (not overridden) instances. Object styles are already crazy complex.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@James Gifford—NitroPress

What do you mean by "crazy complex"? 

[FRIdNGE]

"While it's true that an object with style PHOTO and an object with style CAPTION applied will lose those tags when grouped and an object style is applied to the group…"

Not necessarily! … Simplistic sample with 3 object Styles:

• "blue", for the image (including "blue" fill/"black dots" stroke settings)

• "red" for its caption (including "caption" para style and "red" color)

• "green" for the group (including anchoring settings)

As you can see, Object Styles applied are saved and pure!

(^/)  The Jedi

[dublove]

This can only be done by Adobe.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I think all you've done here is restate what I said...

If you create an object and tag it PHOTO, then create an object and tag it CAPTION, then group those two objects and apply the style GROUP... all the objects will be retagged as GROUP. You can then select and retag the component objects (or just skip tagging them until after grouping and group-styling) but unless I (and the OP) are missing something, you can't apply that ur-style without changing everything in it.

I don't find the workflow of group-tag-tag objects excessive but the OP clearly does. I'm just betting my wooden nickel that "fixing" this problem would involve work right to bare metal code to accommodate overlapping/contradictory object style settings among the elements. Leaving the alternate workflow as the working solution and a feature request, well, something I wouldn't wait for.