I need to achieve the following appearance, with a text-width green line under the exhibit number, but I cannot find any way to achieve it while allowing the exhibit numbers to automatically update if an earlier exhibit is added or removed. Is there any way? InDesign file attached.
The first thing I tried was to generate the exhibit numbers as a numbered list. However, this made the green paragraph rule disappear for reasons I don't totally understand. I did learn that underlines are not compatible with numbered lists. However, I set up the green line as a paragraph rule generated as a "text-width" Rule Above (even though it is below the top line of the paragraph). The width of the green rule needs to match the width of the text in the top line of the paragraph and there needs to be only one green rule per paragraph. The exhibit title is separated from the exhibit number using a forced line break (rather than a paragraph break) to allow the two line to concatenate in the list of exhibits (table of contents). I thought generating the green line as a paragraph rule instead of underline was supposed to make it compatible with numbered lists, but apparently that is not quite right.
The next idea was to keep the exhibit numbers as regular text, but automatically populate the chapter number and section letter ("11D" in the example above) using a section marker and generate the incrementing number after the hyphen using some kind of cross reference. However, I have never worked with section markers and couldn't figure out how to create an incrementing cross reference that automatically adjusts if a paragraph of that style is added or deleted earlier in the story.
I would appreciate any tips or help. I have proposed just letting the green paragraph rule span the full column width, but that would trigger a series of design committee meetings and approvals and several chapters of the manual have already been published using the original design pictured above.
37
Replies
Of course it can, ...
Sure. If the table of contents is just picking up text, it can be restyled. But if the table of contents is also picking up an inline text frame, the contents of the inline text frame won't be restyled. That was the context of the statement.
This is just a variation on Peter Spier's suggestion.
Automatic paragraph numbers are in nonprinting frames anchored to the beginning of each exhibit paragraph. The exhibit number on the first line of each exhibit paragraph is a cross-reference back to the paragraph number in the corresponding anchored frame. The rest works as you'd expect. Once every exhibit paragraph with it's anchored frame is set up, they should all update when a new one is added.
Otherwise, maybe the Jedi's script would work the best or maybe a solution like making the green underline an anchored object that is adjusted manually. ... Of course, Adobe should fix InDesign so paragraph numbers can be fully styled as expected.
While we never found a perfect solution, we ended up accepting the option to use a fixed width for the green line by setting it up as a "column" width paragraph rule with a Right Indent set to make the green line the width of the longest Exhibit Number. This added an intermediate step of first resizing all of the Exhibit Number text frames to be the same width. Some of them now extend off of the artboard, unfortunately, but I think that is acceptable. Nobody directly suggested this approach, so I'm not sure if I can mark anyone's reply as a correct answer.
AdChoices