How to shade characters but not spaces

[Michael J. Hoffman]

I'd like to create a paragraph style or even character style, if appropriate, where the text characters have a background color, but the spaces are unformatted space. Something like this effect:

I can't figure out how to shade only the non-space characters. I have a GREP style in play that can detect and modify the character style, but I can't figure out how to shade only the non white spaces.

Any help is appreciated!

[pixxxelschubser · Accepted solution]

For example

\S+

character style underlined, thickness > font height with a negative offset

[Michael J. Hoffman]

For example

\S+

character style underlined, thickness > font height with a negative offset

By pixxxelschubser

OK, with this, I think I'm on the right track! I knew there had to be a trick to the shading, I didn't think of ultra thick underlines! and with a little extra GREP tweaking, I can pick up a single space before and after the characters so there's a bit of a border.

Thanks!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I think the GREP style is your only option. I don't think ID has any option to exclude style from whitespace. Interesting notion for an option but I think the need is so slight (except for certain types of art/display type) it's not likely to happen.

[davecourtemanche]

Create a character style with a custom underline. Apply that character style to any letter in the paragraph style.

[pixxxelschubser]

Hi @davecourtemanche 

a good start. But for any grep style, it's useful to test it with a few examples. Try your own grep on a simple sample text like "my first $100,000.00".

What happens?

And what with \S+

[davecourtemanche]

But he's doing chord charts. I mean, even jazz doesn't have any million dollar chords. 😄

[pixxxelschubser]

@davecourtemanche 

Too bad. I'm afraid I don't get the joke. English is not my native language. And even worse, my English is not the best.

[Michael J. Hoffman]

I've got it sorted, thanks to @pixxxelschubser 's suggestion. My regular expression is working just fine, the trick for me was to use the underline as the background. Thanks everyone for your help!!

!

[pixxxelschubser]

Glad to hear that.

Just out of curiosity - what's your grep?

In my opinion, there are only two efficient notations for your requirements:

\S+

or

[^\s]+

Both Grep means the same.

[Michael J. Hoffman]

Right now I'm using simply \w which matches all the "word characters" (letters, digits and underscore, but omits punctuation). This is working well. 

I considered \s\w+\s to pick up the spaces surrounding the word characters, but I think that underlining a white space doesn't create a visible underline (have to try that but I believe it will not highlight the white space). 

[janö58856049]

spaces between sentences
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[pixxxelschubser]

spaces between sentences
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By janö58856049

???