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Susan Culligan
Inspiring
June 26, 2021
Answered

Optical margins—how to set as default

  • June 26, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 3603 views

I would like to have Optical Margins as a default, if this is possible. I typeset trade books, and there are several standard elements besides body type (of course), figure captions, pull quotes, among others. I want to avoid having to scroll through the document setting Optical Margins for the extra elements. 

 

Any thoughts?

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer rob day

Thanks for your help. This worked in a new document but not in a document
that I'd copied from another, emptied out, saved as idml, then saved as
indd. Oh well, I'll play around with it and see if I can get it to work in
a new text frame in an existing document.

Cheers,
Susan--



 but not in a document that I'd copied from

 

You copied the story OMA setting over from the existing document. You can turn OMA on for all stories in a document via a script. This will set all the stories’ Optical Margin Size to 12pt:

 

 

var os = 12;
var s = app.documents.item(0).stories;
var i = s.length; while (i--) s[i].storyPreferences.opticalMarginAlignment = true, s[i].storyPreferences.opticalMarginSize = os;

 

 

1 reply

rob day
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 26, 2021

You can set the default for new text frames by closing all documents, setting the desired Story Options and restaring ID. Story Options can also be set in an Object Style or ignored in a Paragraph Style’s Indents and Spacing.

Susan Culligan
Inspiring
June 26, 2021

Thank you for your quick response! But I can't find anywhere to set up
Story Options or new text frames when no document is open.

🤓
--

Peter Spier
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 26, 2021

Open the Object Styles panel and edit the Basic Text Frame object style.