Drawing a line in InDesign!

[Bob Marley's Dad]

All I want to do is put a black line on a page in between two blocks of text and can I do it? Can I buggery.

Yes, I know, I use the line tool. It seems to be one of those things that's so easy to do that there are no step by step tutorials on it but everytime I use the line tool if I click away from the line I've drawn it disappears and anyway it just seems to draw a bounding box, not an actual line.

Please help, my mind is going.

[belboid]

I dont use InDesign, but.....

you havent accidentally set the default line width to (near) zero have you? or to be white?

[rutabowa]

I dont use InDesign, but.....

you havent accidentally set the default line width to (near) zero have you? or to be white?
yeah it sounds like this, check in the Stroke palette and the Swatches pallette (it's the outline colour you want to be black.)

[Bob Marley's Dad]

Thanks for your replies. The stroke is set to black, the fill is set to black and the weight is set to 1. No difference, I draw the line using the line tool and a bounding box appears then when I click away from it it disappears. If I right click on it a context menu appears and all the attributes are set in there but still when I click away from it it disappears. I think the drawing tools in InDesign are just the same as any other Adobe product if that's any help.

[Bob Marley's Dad]

Nailed it. It's the pen tool not the line tool that draws lines. How stupid of me to think that the line tool would be used for drawing lines. :rolleyes:

Thanks for your help. :)

[Soreenkid]

Use the pen tool, hold down shift - and drag in the direction you want the line to go in.

[bristle-krs]

i'd recommend 'moving to indesign' by david blatner, christopher smith & steve werner (peachpit press) - lots of handy tips & shortcuts. it might be in your local library system if you're lucky!

[Bob Marley's Dad]

i'd recommend 'moving to indesign' by david blatner, christopher smith & steve werner (peachpit press) - lots of handy tips & shortcuts. it might be in your local library system if you're lucky!

Bloody hell, they've only just got Windows 95 for Dummies in, it'll be a cold day in hell before anything about InDesign graces their shelves, bless them.

I'm getting InDesign CS2 classroom in a book, it should be here tomorrow so that'll help but thanks for the recommendation. :)

[bristle-krs]

is this for the magazine? how's that going?

[spring-peeper]

Glad the problem is solved.

I use coreldraw and it took forever to figure out how to draw a line. For a while, I was making a rectangle and squishing it.

Then I tried the "help" that came with the program.

Funny though, I would never of thought of looking there for it. But now I can draw lines - yippee!!!!

[Soreenkid]

Bloody hell, they've only just got Windows 95 for Dummies in, it'll be a cold day in hell before anything about InDesign graces their shelves, bless them.

I'm getting InDesign CS2 classroom in a book, it should be here tomorrow so that'll help but thanks for the recommendation. :)

Make sure you send me the files as InDesign ONE, not two :)

[rutabowa]

I'm a bit confused, I draw lines with the line tool... just click at the start point and hold, then release at the end point. pen tool works as well anyway, but it's wierd the line tool doesn't.

[Bob Marley's Dad]

is this for the magazine? how's that going?

It is, it's going well thanks. :)

I was really worried at first about using In Design, I could have used MS Publisher but I thought if I was learning a piece of software from scratch I wanted to learn one that I could scale things up with at a later date, so I got InDesign and then after an inital go at it I panicked and thought I couldn't do it but I'm really getting into it now, I love it in fact. I'm learning loads every day.

I got a grant of £2K which will cover the printing costs etc, I can't afford to pay anyone but they'll see their name in print, what more could they ask for? :D

As far as the writing goes I've just about got there, the images I'm just learning about and am in the process of scouring image sites and also thinking about taking a few of my own and to that end I'm also learning Photoshop.

So yeah it's going well, I won't hit my target publication date of the end of September but I aren't too bothered, I know I'll finish it now and have relaxed a lot about the whole thing.

[Bob Marley's Dad]

I'm a bit confused, I draw lines with the line tool... just click at the start point and hold, then release at the end point. pen tool works as well anyway, but it's wierd the line tool doesn't.

You're right, I have no idea what happened but later on when I went back to the white space at the side of the document that you can doodle stuff on there were all the lines I'd tried to draw, they'd decided to appear but they definitely weren't there when I first drew them. Maybe I'd changed the fill on the line in the meantime and that made them show up, god knows, anyway thanks for your help. :)

[Soreenkid]

I got a grant of £2K which will cover the printing costs etc, I can't afford to pay anyone but they'll see their name in print, what more could they ask for? :D


DVD of HL2 ;)

[Bob Marley's Dad]

Bloody hell, they've only just got Windows 95 for Dummies in, it'll be a cold day in hell before anything about InDesign graces their shelves, bless them.

Time to eat my words, I went to the library last night and lo and behold there on the shelves was In Design CS2 for Dummies, they'd just got it in that day! So even if my classroom in a book...er...book doesn't show up I've got some learning material.

[dlx1]

nop BMD told you before this the best book I got for Indesign CS mac/win by Sandee Cohen

top brack down/ quick find/ and lots of screen shot = less words :cool:

[gabi]

InDesign is such an improvement on Quark - I used that for about five years, and still couldn't figure some things out. The great thing about InDesign is that if you know Illy and/or Photoshop you're sorted.

What kind of mag are you creating BMD? If you need any help design/layout wise, let me know, I've got lots of downtime right now in my job, everyone seems to have fucked off for summer holidays, leaving me in the 'hot seat'... :D

[chio]

I just tried to install Adobe CS2 (inc. InDesign) on my computer and it told me I needed to have 384MB of memory, and gave only a quit option. :rolleyes:

[Soreenkid]

I wouldnt want to use CS on anything less than 512MB chio.

At the moment, I`m going to kill Adobe... can you believe InDesign one and two can't open each other's files? GGGNNN :mad:

[Bob Marley's Dad]

InDesign is such an improvement on Quark - I used that for about five years, and still couldn't figure some things out. The great thing about InDesign is that if you know Illy and/or Photoshop you're sorted.

What kind of mag are you creating BMD? If you need any help design/layout wise, let me know, I've got lots of downtime right now in my job, everyone seems to have fucked off for summer holidays, leaving me in the 'hot seat'... :D

Oooh, thanks for that, I may well take you up on it. I'm creating a magazine for drug users, mainly with articles around hard drugs and harm reduction, it's called a life of substance, maybe 24 pages, probably 16. I've got the articles in place and I'm just getting the layout and design sorted now. I'll get in touch. :)

[Bob Marley's Dad]

Here's a pdf of the first few pages of layout I've done with InDesign, the images are just comps of the ones I might be using, the masthead on the front page is just fonts, it's going to be an image but I haven't done that yet, there will be more text on the front page, but anyway this is how it's shaping up so far.

Link (http://www.savefile.com/files/4462629)

[Bob Marley's Dad]

I just tried to install Adobe CS2 (inc. InDesign) on my computer and it told me I needed to have 384MB of memory, and gave only a quit option. :rolleyes:

That's weird, the pc I'm using it on only has 256MB of ram and while it runs it a bit slow it still runs. :confused:

[GarfieldLeChat]

I just tried to install Adobe CS2 (inc. InDesign) on my computer and it told me I needed to have 384MB of memory, and gave only a quit option. :rolleyes:
install them indivually from the folder chio they'll run fine but be sluggish, though verison cue won't run on less than 384 ... so you can't synch your files...

[chio]

install them indivually from the folder chio they'll run fine but be sluggish, though verison cue won't run on less than 384 ... so you can't synch your files...
I'm on Apple, and each disc just has an "Adobe Installer" file on which does exactly the same thing. I'd not be that bothered, but I downloaded the 2GB file last night while I was at the theatre and overnight and it's 2 out of my 15GB monthly allowance.

[Bob Marley's Dad]

install them indivually from the folder chio they'll run fine but be sluggish, though verison cue won't run on less than 384 ... so you can't synch your files...

Version cue is a faff and best turned off imo, if you want to share your work just save it on the network server or just save it and send it.

[firky]

Version cue is a faff and best turned off imo, if you want to share your work just save it on the network server or just save it and send it.

I've to see it in use yet, in a corporate, small business, or personal context. I tried it at work, but since I'm the soul design dude, (and also anything vaguely to do with computers :rolleyes: ) it never got used.

TELL YOU WHAT IS A PISSER CS and CS2 BEING FUCKIN ALIEN TO EACH OTHER!!! :mad: