Underline disappears beneath in-line shaded box - bug report(?)

[Stephen_...@adobeforums.com]

When placing a shaded box in-line within the same text frame as underlined text, the underline itself disappears 'beneath' the shaded box even though the characters remain visible on top of the shaded box.

It seems to me that the in-line box lives in a space between the underline and the text itself, thus masking the underline. When the shaded box is NOT in-line, but rather in a separate text frame, I am able to send it to the back of the page behind both the text and the underline, but this is not an acceptable solution since the shaded box needs to flow with the surround text.

I'm using CS, and this problem did not exist (to the best of my knowledge) in earlier versions of InDesign. I'm able to workaround it by creating the gray shaded box as a transparent black box, rather than an opaque gray box, but it's a less than desirable solution.

Has anyone else experienced this? Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,

--Stephen

[Dave_S...@adobeforums.com]

If the inline is in the same paragraph as the text, then what you see is not a bug but a feature. The underline is behind the text, the strikethrough is in front.

You could solve your problem by either moving the inline to the previous paragraph -- the underlines of the next paragraph are in front of the contents of the previous paragraph (I belive that's true, but I don't have time to check right now), or by using a custom strikethrough to simulate the underline.

Dave

[Stephen_...@adobeforums.com]

Dave,

Thanks, but the inline box is already in the previous paragraph, and yet it still obscures the underline.

Still seems like a universally undesirable behavior to me, at least it is in my experience, and it affects hundreds of pages of our books. If there's better explanation for why it's behaving this way I'd love to hear it... I hope someone's benefitting from this feature.

--Stephen

[Dave_S...@adobeforums.com]

Well, most people don't use underlines very much, and few of them use inline graphics at all, and of those very few want text to run over the top of the graphics.

So, you're part of a pretty exclusive club.

Dave

[Dave_S...@adobeforums.com]

Consider putting your text into single-cell tables if all you're doing with the inlines is creating backgrounds for paragraphs.

Dave

[Stephen_...@adobeforums.com]

The single-cell table is a very cute solution, thanks. It's a few clicks faster than the transparency one.

I remain firm in my belief that this is a bug, however. I'm always struck at the way that people consider underlines to be unusual, or even out-dated. They're quite common in my line of work, and even though I recognized that they're hideous, they are a necessity.

That's one more point in the exclusive 'InDesign-using textbook publishing' column for me. I often get the feeling that there aren't even enough of us to form a club.

Thanks as always for the help, though.

--Stephen