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duglasUKR
Participating Frequently
March 6, 2010
Question

Insert Curly Brackets, Multi-line indicator of a group

  • March 6, 2010
  • 3 replies
  • 89981 views

I am learning, mostly on my own, how to use InDesign.  I have searched Adobe for help on how to insert a curly bracket } that spans multiple lines used to indicate a group of things.  I have tried to insert a symbol and rasterize it and just drag handles, but small and large brackets end up looking drastically different.  I would appreciate any suggestions/tips on this question.

Thanks

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    3 replies

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    duglasUKRAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    March 7, 2010

    The suggestion to include a screenshot was a good one.  So

    here it is:

    On the left are steps in a process, each step has a scale value.  Steps are grouped together in phases with the curly brackets pointing to the phase title.

    Jongware
    Jongware
    Community Expert
    March 6, 2010

    a. Use the Symbol font. It has several parts of curly and straight braces and parentheses, designed to stack upon eachother with zero extra leading (or slightly less, if you want a smaller brace).

    b. Put these into an Anchored object, anchored somewhere at an appropriate place, so its frame will always keep the same relative position to its text.

    c. Well, it oughta look like this. On the left: a frame with three parts of a curly brace. In the middle: some random math. The top line "contains" the anchored object, as can be seen by the ¥ sign. On the right, the anchored object itself, positioned relatively to its anchor.

      Peter Spier
      Peter Spier
      Community Expert
      March 6, 2010

      I was pondering doing something similar, but using a drop cap in an otherwise empty frame.

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      duglasUKRAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      March 7, 2010

      I am going to try this suggestion.  It may be the easiest to implement.

      Peter Spier
      Peter Spier
      Community Expert
      March 6, 2010

      What sort of "groups of things" are we talking about? Is this some sort of methematical work? You might be best off creating this as a separate graphic of some sort (that is, a graphic of the entire group) and then placing that into ID. More explanation and a screen shot would be helpful.

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        duglasUKRAuthor
        Participating Frequently
        March 7, 2010

        The groups are not mathematical, see my reply to the original post.  Thanks for the suggestion to post

        a screenshot.  It is now in the post.

        Separate graphic was the direction I was going, but it wasn't working the way I needed.

        Thanks for trying.

        Peter Spier
        Peter Spier
        Community Expert
        March 7, 2010

        OK, now I can see what the problem is, I think.  You want to have the radii at the ends and the height of the "v" in the center consistent from group to group, and adjust the lengths of the verticals only. Is that correct?

        That's doable with a separate graphic, and I'd suggest making one for each number of lines you are likely to need, then put them all ina library. I'd approach this by  typing a curly brace in a size you find appealing for the fixed elements, then convert that to outlines.

        Use the direct select tool to marquis around the path nodes for each end, one group at a time, and use the up or down arrow keys to move the groups toward or away from the center in equal amounts. Not really as much work as it sounds.

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