Small Caps after headings and section breaks?

[ehbowen]

Sorry if I sound like a broken record, folks. But my book designer apparently enabled a global setting in InDesign to render the first few words of every paragraph following a chapter heading or section break in small caps.

When I needed to make a few edits in Affinity Publisher, those small cap lines were lost. Even worse, the letter spacing and kerning were all messed up; it looks like it's following the spacing of the small caps even though the small caps are no longer there.

Do I need to go through each one (of hundreds...) of section breaks and correct the letter spacing by hand? Or is there some easier and global way to do so, or perhaps even restore the original small cap typography?

[MikeTO]

If the small caps didn't import from an IDML file then yes, you'd have to reformat those manually. But opening an IDML file isn't intended to give you a perfect document, you should be prepared to do a lot of work to transition the document from ID to Publisher because the text will flow differently for a lot of different reasons. Consider the migrated document a first draft.

To apply small caps to the first few words of a paragraph you can use the Initial Words feature. You should be able to do that globally if the document uses a unique text style for the first paragraph of a chapter, which the designer should definitely have done. Please see page 101 of the current version of the free Publisher manual I've shared in this forum - the link is in my signature.

I think we'd need to see a screenshot or better yet a test document for the messed up letter spacing and kerning, that shouldn't happen when opening IDML. You didn't open a PDF of the InDesign file, did you? That would account for the messed up formatting. Opening a PDF is intended as a last resort and you shouldn't do that for a brand-new InDesign document because you will have lost all of your text styles.

Good luck.

[thomaso]

10 hours ago, ehbowen said:

Do I need to go through each one (of hundreds...) of section breaks and correct the letter spacing by hand? Or is there some easier and global way

If the text has saved styles with reduced tracking or kerning applied it might work to adjust this style property in the Text Style panel.

Alternatively: With the Find And Replace panel you can search with "Find" for certain style properties and apply a different style with "Replace All".
To define specific style properties that you want to modify choose next to 'Find' -> the cog icon –> 'Format' –> … and set the related properties in the following dialog.

[ehbowen]

15 hours ago, MikeTO said:

If the small caps didn't import from an IDML file then yes, you'd have to reformat those manually. But opening an IDML file isn't intended to give you a perfect document, you should be prepared to do a lot of work to transition the document from ID to Publisher because the text will flow differently for a lot of different reasons. Consider the migrated document a first draft.

To apply small caps to the first few words of a paragraph you can use the Initial Words feature. You should be able to do that globally if the document uses a unique text style for the first paragraph of a chapter, which the designer should definitely have done. Please see page 101 of the current version of the free Publisher manual I've shared in this forum - the link is in my signature.

I think we'd need to see a screenshot or better yet a test document for the messed up letter spacing and kerning, that shouldn't happen when opening IDML. You didn't open a PDF of the InDesign file, did you? That would account for the messed up formatting. Opening a PDF is intended as a last resort and you shouldn't do that for a brand-new InDesign document because you will have lost all of your text styles.

Good luck.

Well, I've tried opening both as .pdf and as .idml; serious problems each way although more serious as .idml...the text simply disappears for the last 200 or so pages. Plus, the illustrations seem to screw everything up...it's a mess.

It looks as if I'm going to have to re-build this book file from scratch. Can someone recommend an Affinity Publisher tutorial, preferably geared towards print book publication?

[MikeTO]

29 minutes ago, ehbowen said:

Well, I've tried opening both as .pdf and as .idml; serious problems each way although more serious as .idml...the text simply disappears for the last 200 or so pages. Plus, the illustrations seem to screw everything up...it's a mess.

It looks as if I'm going to have to re-build this book file from scratch. Can someone recommend an Affinity Publisher tutorial, preferably geared towards print book publication?

With the IDML import It is likely that the text is still there but in an overflowing text frame. You can use the Preflight panel to find overflowing text frames. If you use the IDML import at least you'll have intact text styles.

If you want to start over, I recommend reading the Books chapter of the free PDF manual I've shared in this forum - the link is in my signature. It covers the options for structuring a book. If this is your first project I recommend not using the Book feature (which divides a book project into separate chapter files) because it would add a lot of complexity while you're still learning the application.

Good luck