For Indic book designers and typesetters: Adobe InDesign and Indic scripts

[Nityānanda Miśra]

namo vaḥ

I do not use Adobe InDesign (or any other similar desktop publishing software). I have typeset nearly twenty books and several papers and presentations in LaTeX. Many of these used IAST or Devanagari text and some books were entirely in Hindi or Sanskrit. With XeLaTeX, the use of Devanagari Unicode is quite easy. This is not the case with Adobe InDesign, where a simple operation of copy-pasting Devanagari text from another application needs numerous settings changes and operations to work as expected: ten to fifteen mouse and keyboard operations to get something working when this should all be seamless in a desktop publication application.

Recently an InDesign user told me they could not get copy-pasted Unicode Devanagari text working in Adobe InDesign. I installed a trial version of Adobe InDesign, played around, got it working, documented the steps, and finally duly uninstalled Adobe InDesign as I find LaTeX much better.

If one wants to use Adobe InDesign to design/typeset Indic documents or books, here are the steps to copy-paste Unicode Devanagari text and get it working in Adobe InDesign. I have not tried with other Indic scripts but assume similar operations might be needed.

1) Copy-paste the Unicode Devanagari text from Word, Chrome, any other application or the Internet into a text box in Adobe InDesign. By default, the matra glyphs and conjunct consonants will be messed up, see the first image.

2) Select the copy-pasted text

3) Click on ‘Window’ → ‘Styles’ → ‘Paragraph Styles’ → ‘New Paragraph Style’, see the second image

4) In the ‘New Paragraph Style’ pop-up, make the following changes—
    4a) Under General → Style Name, give this new style a name (e.g., HindiStyle or DevanagariStyle)
    4b) Under ‘Advanced Character Format’, click ‘Language’ dropdown and choose ‘Hindi (India)’, see third and fourth images
    4c) Under ‘Justification’, click ‘Composer’ dropdown and choose ‘Adobe World-Ready Composer’, see fifth and sixth images
    4d) Now click OK at the bottom of the screen, see the seventh image

5) With the text selected, choose this new HindiStyle (or DevanagariStyle) from the ‘Paragraph Styles’ menu as the paragraph style. This will fix everything, as shown in the eighth image (before choosing the new style) and the ninth image (after choosing the new style).

[BVK Sastry (G-S-Pop)]

Namaste

Thanks Nityanand ji for the useful  guidance.

Regards

BVK Sastry

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[Nagaraj Paturi]

Thanks, Sri Nityanand-ji. This is very useful. 

Similar guidance for Latex or XeLatex itself could also be useful. 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/bvparishat/026701d7c964%24ea05cc00%24be116400%24%40gmail.com.

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Nagaraj Paturi

 

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

Director, Indic Academy

BoS, MIT School of Vedic Sciences, Pune, Maharashtra

BoS Kavikulaguru Kalidasa Sanskrit University, Ramtek, Maharashtra

BoS Veda Vijnana Gurukula, Bengaluru.

Member, Advisory Council, Veda Vijnana Shodha Samsthanam, Bengaluru

BoS Rashtram School of Public Leadership

Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Studies in Public Leadership

Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies, 

FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education, 

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

 

 

 

[उज्ज्वल राजपूत]

नम॑स्ते महोदय!

आ॒भ्यां सु॒करः॑ स्याद् आर॒म्भः-।

• https://github.com/shreevatsa/xelatex-Mularthabodhini
• https://github.com/shreevatsa/nmisra-arapv/tree/notes अथ॑वा https://github.com/shreevatsa/nmisra-arapv/tree/master

सोमवार, 25 अक्तूबर 2021 को 12:11:15 pm UTC+5:30 बजे Nagaraj Paturi ने लिखा:

[Nagaraj Paturi]

Thanks for the links. 

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[श्रीमल्ललितालालितः]

It is always better to use Adobe Incopy to type/copy-paste the work and then finish proofreading. In the end import in Indesign and change styles accordingly. Typing in Word,etc creates more problems and should be avoided. Incopy is like plain  text editor, so no styles here and typing flows effortlessly. Since it is integrated in specific way to Indesign, arranging text in boxes and styling them becomes easy.

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श्रीमल्ललितालालितः
www.lalitaalaalitah.com

[Nagaraj Paturi]

Thanks, Swamiji. This is very helpful.

I have to see and learn Incopy though. 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/bvparishat/CAJH_SbzK0MOn_NMU86rBf-V4%3DE9iFHFZU9h2fOkQbQXkozUriQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Mārcis Gasūns]

‘Adobe World-Ready Composer’ - and it's lacking is the most common mistake I've seen in books in Devanagari.