Overlining letters -- can I do this?

[Bran MacEachaidh]

Hi all,
Sorry if I'm using a confusing term, but I don't know what this would be called: I need to be able to apply an "overline" to some vowels, probably as a character style -- not an overstrike, but something like an underline except with the line above the letters rather than below.

Is this possible ? (I'm using ID 4.05 on Win XP.)

I've been making do by using a font that has defined glyphs of the vowels with a macron diacritic, which *almost* works, but it doesn't quite cut it -- the macron generally isn't as wide as the body of the vowel itself, and besides I need the overline to join between consecutive overlined characters the way an underline does.

I'm hoping I've just missed something, but any suggestions would be gratefully received. Thanks !!

Bran

[Bran MacEachaidh]

Well, wish I'd thought of that before I posted !!

The solution just dawned on me -- using the strikethrough option with a positive offset seems to work.

Thanks for the help !! ;-) !

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

The solution to which you refer isn't showing in my browser for some reason, so the following may well be a repeat.

A custom underline would work as well as a strike-through. Once defined, to your satisfaction, save it as a character style for easy application wherever you need it.

Peter

[Bran MacEachaidh]

Hi Peter,
Thanks indeed for your help. I couldn't get the underline option to work, even with a sufficiently-large offset, but the strike-through did it for me.

I didn't think InDesign would let me down ! :-) !

[M_Bla...@adobeforums.com]

(I'm wondering if it was a font-specific issue)

I doubt it. I just ran through a quick test with a couple of dozen fonts or more and none of them had a problem. I don't think underline is an attribute of the font anyhow. It's ability to position, size, colour, whatever, makes it much the same as a paragraph rule.

In fact, the only difference I see between underline and strikethrough is the default offset for each, and the fact that negative offset moves underlines up and moves strikethrough down. Again, just like paragraph rules. Perhaps you were just moving it the wrong way or you inadvertently changed the weight to zero.

even with a sufficiently-large offset

I also tested how much the line could move up and down and had no trouble moving it above three previous lines of text and right out of the text frame.

[Kenneth...@adobeforums.com]

Custom underline and strikethrough can also be used to imitate Word
"highlighting".

--
Kenneth Benson
Pegasus Type, Inc.
www.pegtype.com