how to hang bullets?

[paulseymour2@adobeforums.com]

hello. new to indesign, and first project is a book! anyway... seemingly simple question:

is there a way to hang bullets outside of the text box?

i'm trying to make some tight columns, and some text is bulleted, some is not. the indent looks really messy. i can't figure out the trick. thanks!

..p

[Nini Tjäder]

No. Not really.
What you use is a hanging indent, but inside the textbox.

[Bjorn_Ost@adobeforums.com]

The optical margin adjustment helps with this. But that will affect the entire text thread not just your list. Worth a try.

It is found in the 'article' palette (translated from my swedish version, so maybe it is called something else originally).

[Martin_Sammtleben@adobeforums.com]

In article <3bc1caa7.1@webcrossing.la2eafNXanI>,
[email]Bjorn_Ost@adobeforums.com[/email] wrote:

> The optical margin adjustment helps with this. But that will affect the
> entire text thread not just your list. Worth a try.

In QXP you can insert a space before the bullet and apply negative
tracking to it. Sadly that doesn't work in ID.

--
Cheers Martin

[Bjorn_Ost@adobeforums.com]

Works in ID too.

[wa veghel]

Use a left indent on all text (example: 12pt)
The bullet text: use a first line indent (in this example: -12 pt)
Type a tab after your bullet

[Martin_Sammtleben@adobeforums.com]

In article <3bc1caa7.4@webcrossing.la2eafNXanI>,
"wa veghel" <advance@xs4all.nl> wrote:

> Use a left indent on all text (example: 12pt)
> The bullet text: use a first line indent (in this example: -12 pt)
> Type a tab after your bullet

Thanks, perfect!

[Martin_Sammtleben@adobeforums.com]

In article <3bc1caa7.3@webcrossing.la2eafNXanI>,
[email]Bjorn_Ost@adobeforums.com[/email] wrote:

> Works in ID too.

You *can* apply negative tracking but the bullet won't move *beyond* the
frame border, at least not here in ID CS1.

[Eric_@_MCA@adobeforums.com]

You could also use anchored objects—either an outlined bullet or a bullet in a text box by itself with a 1p x-offset.

[Bjorn_Ost@adobeforums.com]

You *can* apply negative tracking but the bullet won't move *beyond* the
frame border, at least not here in ID CS1.




I'm on CS1 too. You need of course make the bulleted lists yourself, not use the Pagemaker plugin automatic variety.

[Martin_Sammtleben@adobeforums.com]

In article <3bc1caa7.8@webcrossing.la2eafNXanI>,
[email]Bjorn_Ost@adobeforums.com[/email] wrote:

> I'm on CS1 too. You need of course make the bulleted lists yourself, not use
> the Pagemaker plugin automatic variety.

Sorry, I'd like to understand what you mean.

I do create the bullets manually like so:

[space] [bullet char] [space] some text

Then I select the first space and apply negative tracking to it, but it
just won't move farther left than the frame edge.

What am I doing wrong?

--
Cheers Martin

[Tom Usrey]

Don't select the first space. Just place your cursor between the first space and the bullet. Then kern.

[Bob Levine]

> [space] [bullet char] [space] some text

I'd highly recommend changing that space after the bullet to a tab.

Bob

[Martin_Sammtleben@adobeforums.com]

In article <3bc1caa7.10@webcrossing.la2eafNXanI>,
"Tom Usrey" <tom@cindyeth.com> wrote:

> Don't select the first space. Just place your cursor between the first space
> and the bullet. Then kern.

Bingo - that did it!

Thanks a bunch! :-)

--
Cheers Martin

[Nini Tjäder]

It is called a hanging indent and you should really use a tab for it, not spaces if you want conrol over it. With the tab you get the bullet hanging and the text starting at whatever tabstop you specify and the next lines starting on same distance from frame-edge as the set tabstop. All within the textframe of course as ID does not support anything outside the textframe. This is normal word processing procedures for this and has always been since Word 1 and since ID 1 as well.

[Martin_Sammtleben@adobeforums.com]

In article <3bc1caa7.13@webcrossing.la2eafNXanI>,
"Nini Tjäder" <nini@ninisworld.com> wrote:

> It is called a hanging indent and you should really use a tab for it, not
> spaces if you want conrol over it.

Sure.

> All within the
> textframe of course as ID does not support anything outside the textframe.

If you do as described and assign a negative kerning of e.g. -500 to the
bullet char, it does move beyond the frame border.

It's certainly not a method I'd use very often, but ideal for the odd
quick fix.

--
Cheers Martin

[Dominic_Hurley@adobeforums.com]

Also note that if you have optical margins on, the margin is calculated on the first letter of the paragraph, not on a bullet or number generated by ID's bullets feature. So, if your bullet is supposed to be flush against the margin, it may in fact sit slightly outside it depending on the shape of the first letter, and bullets in a list will not line up exactly unless all the paragraphs start with the same letter. This to my mind is a bug, but the workround is to add a discretionary hyphen before the first letter.