MikeW

There is a free script that can convert folders of InDesign documents to .idml

Books/booklets have a number of pages evenly divided by 4. Which means you either need to adjust to fit on 32 or 36 pages. As is, with 34 pages, 2 pages have to be added and it is done automatically.

All .indd files are binary. They need exported as .idml files. .idml files are a zip archive containing. xml files.

Tilting at windmills much, @jackamus? You are not going to convince anyone.

I cannot get \<(\s?(S+)){2}$ to work in RB nor APub. Adobe recently changed the boost library from 1.65 to 1.72. And evidently didn't provide backward compatibility and so have broken some plugins. I don't know what Serif uses. For regular expressions, I pretty much stick to Perl 5.30-5.32 in RB. If the expression works in RB, it works in ID and, so far in my testing, in APub.

Hah hah--even with publishers here in the US, I often cannot "get away" with that. I believe, if I recall correctly, the issue for that style manual is that 4 or more letters are as long or longer than the recommended first line indent. Even in ID, I only use the above grep solutions in novel reprints that are destined for paperbacks. Never for first runs or hardcover reprints where there are text changes. And...I almost never use ID's paragraph composer.

@lacerto, your grep can simply be: .\S+?$ The Chicago Manual of Style says that single words of 4 or more characters including spaces (but not including punctuation) are acceptable. One can use: ([[:alnum:]][^[:alnum:]]*){4}$ in APub to meet that style manual--or adjust it further.

Yep. My bad. Still, the rest of what I wrote remains true. There would still be the single pdf/image for the first two master page instances of the generated pdf, the rest of the pages reference those.

Not that it matters, but it's a 2000 page document when the merge is completed... The image, no matter the type, will still be included on each and every page. While that might enable the pdf to generate fully with APub, the resultant pdf will still be far larger than it ought to be...at least compared to ID/QXP, and likely others. An ID/QXP pdf of the same construction will only include a single copy of the master page pdf/image and merely reference it on subsequent pages that use it. That matters a lot both in speed of export but also of final pdf size.

It appears the ToUnicode table is corrupt for Montserrat Medium and its corresponding italic. But, it also appears all characters are in the proper Unicode slots. It's possible those Montserrat fonts themselves are corrupt or otherwise mangled. Might be worthwhile to find the newest versions of that family, remove the current ones, then install the updated ones (assuming there are updated ones). If the ones in use are the newest available, downloading them again, remove the former, reinstall and retest. That said, Xara's applications opens the original pdf just fine.

I think that depends on the definition of efficient. Time pressure has been and still is an issue, whether using mechanicals (the physical parts) or computers. I know I can set a book faster--and as good/better--than mechanical type systems. To me, that is more efficient. The main problem I saw in the late 1980s through the 1990s when technology was quickly being adopted was the undervaluing of the people doing the work on computers. But these dtp operators were largely doing the undervaluing to themselves.

I'm pretty certain scribes felt the same way once the printing press was a thing. Democratization in once-skilled crafts have always displaced the craftsman. However, at least in this field, the few were replaced by the many. And so a boom was created that spread to other needed industries and support services. More paper, more print devices, more ... it's a long list of jobs that were created in many industries to support this little thing called DTP. One thing I've always liked about layout work and the needed application support is the ability to tweak a design and get approval, sometimes in minutes, instead of having changes couriered to a company and wait, sometimes days, for approvals or more requested changes.

Really? From late 1980s layout applications to this day made by every company I've dealt with, it is a paragraph property. Including Serif's PagePlus.

Software, if it includes pre-made text styles, certainly needs default settings. You can set the leading and paragraph spacing and make them the default--for you.

So, in your opinion, what should be the defaults?

This area of text styles/formatting does have the "tools" to do what you desire. So why not just do it and be done with it? Serif, Quark, Adobe, et al, need to ship with default settings. Whether they choose what I consider my defaults is not relevant as long as I can change their as-shipped defaults and save them for my default usage. Which you can too.

If you use text styles, there is no to little need to even look at the paragraph or character tabs. Font and leading are set in the paragraph style. My default for the text style named Body uses 12pt text. The leading has a value of 1 (= 100%). If I opt to change the Body text style's font or its point size, the leading then accounts for this.

If you set a paragraph style to be say 10pt, and set that paragraph styles leading to say 11pt, then subsequently change the point size for the text to say 14pt, the leading will still be 11pt. So the leading value would also need changed.

Perhaps the 120% is for compatibility with originating text coming from word processors, where it's been a default. But, in the end, you can do what I did and just delete the as-shipped default text styles and create your own however you want and set them as default text styles for all future publications.

Yes, 12/14 can be a (poorly expressed) fraction. In the context, as noted, when spec'ing type, it stands for point size of type on a specific size in points for leading. None. It's not about what an application uses for labeling fields. Simply about abbreviating point/leading values. Speaking of archaic notation: Leading. While applications still use this archaic notion, which application wants you to insert differing thickness of actual lead between lines of type? I mean, why shouldn't applications be more verbose and label such fields: Inter-paragraph line spacing...or some such gibberish? I entered this thread just to let Walt know the abbrev. notation such as 12/14 is still taught and used. If you don't like the notation, don't use it.

You kept calling it a fraction. It's not a fraction. That's all. Maybe consider the 12/14 a contraction. Or, maybe educate yourself.

(not a fraction)

Context is everything. An example would be like: Sabon 12/14 Either directly beside example type, or an arrow pointing to example type. While you might confuse such notation as a fraction, a person setting type, at least with some experience or explanation, would not be.

12/14 is how type is still spec'd, in this case. It's taught that way still and is so used in every branding guide I've ever been sent. It's up to the user to understand that and how it applies to software.

Adobe Illustrator cannot use a pdf's Layers (which are special Optional Content Groups in a pdf, not layers as we think of them).