v1105 Filler Text – fill more than 1 frame

[thomaso]

"When filler text is inserted, its starting sentence is chosen randomly." says the Help.

When I create a layout of empty text frames + want to fill them with filler text I need to select each frame individually, otherwise the option is greyed-out. – Maybe to enable different starting sentences? – Well, if I select frame by frame and apply filler text then all frames get the same starting sentence. To achieve different filler text for each frame I have to fill a frame directly after frame creation and repeat this 2-step process for every frame. – I assume the latter was not developed for a certain reason or purpose by design but rather is an oversight.

 

 

 

[Dan C]

Hi @thomaso,

Thanks for your report!

Interestingly, this seems to be determined by the active tool when adding filler text from the Text menu and I suspect you are correct in this being an oversight.

With the Text Frame (or Artistic Text) tool selected, when navigating to Text > Insert Filler Text, the inserted filler text will always be different.

The same is true when right-clicking within a text frame and selecting this option, as the act of right-clicking in the frame activates the text tool.

With the Move Tool (or any other non-text based tool) selected, when using Text > Insert Filler Text the same text is inputting, incorrectly.

I'm getting this logged with our developers now, as I see no reason why this should be the case

[thomaso]

11 minutes ago, Dan C said:

determined by the active tool (...)

With the Move Tool (...)

Ah, I haven't noticed this influence before, Thank you! – I confirm, with the Text Tool I am able to add variable filler text to a prepared series of text frames – while the Move Tool as used above prevents from variable text.

Aside this issue I wonder: If I am allowed to add filler text with the Move Tool with 1 text frame selected – why should I not be allowed to do it for more than 1 selected frame at a time? I understand that the Text Tool wouldn't handle this, but the Move Tool?

[Dan C]

11 minutes ago, thomaso said:

If I am allowed to add filler text with the Move Tool with 1 text frame selected – why should I not be allowed to do it for more than 1 selected frame at a time? I understand that the Text Tool wouldn't handle this, but the Move Tool?

As I understand it, Filler Text in it's current implementation simply isn't design to handle adding multiple 'stories' at once - my apologies but I'm not certain if this is a limitation of the option itself, or if the option is expecting a text tool to be enabled (hence the above issue when other tools are selected) and therefore multiple frames being selected wasn't considered.

However I can see the benefits of being able to add Filler Text to multiple, unlinked frames at once with the Move Tool active, especially when doing mock-up work, so I will log this as an improvement with our developers now and will question in this request if the current behaviour is expected (and if so, the reason for such)

I hope this helps!