Nested Line Style affecting my GREP style

Hello all.
I'm formatting a large book at the moment and am trying out a "runt fixer" to prevent bad sentence breaks in columns. So far I have created a character style that only applies the "no-break" attribute, and have two GREP styles - one looking for a space and 8 characters or less before a full-stop, exclamation mark or question mark; and another looking for the 8 characters or less then a space after a full-stop, exclamation point or question mark. The codes are:
\s.{1,8}[.!?]
and
(?<=[.?!]\s).{1,8}\s
It works... nearly. It has issues when fullstops are used in numbers such as displaying currency, dates... but largely works for the text.
The problem occurs when I go to the Drop Caps and Nested Styles feature, and use the "New Line Style" - in this instance it was used at the beginning of chapters to make the first line smallcaps. Instead, something strange happened to the second GREP style - it no longer worked.
In case I'm not explaining myself properly, i've uploaded a sample of what is going on here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55743036/runt-issue.idml
The first page is OK, but the second page displays the fault. I've colorised the GREPs so that it is clear what is not breaking at the end of a sentence and what is not breaking at the start of a sentence.
Has anyone experienced this before or can tell me what is going on? it is my error or is it a bug?
Colin

@Colin – I thought, I could make it work, if I introduce another GREP Style BEFORE the one that is not working: A GREP Style, that is doing nothing (applying the character style "[None]" to a character like "§" that is simply not in the text. Did not work.
Another attempt with InDesign CS5.5 OSX 10.6.8: I made a new paragraph style BASED ON the one that is not working. Changed nothing in that new one, just let it be based on the not working one.
Now: THAT IS FINALLY WORKING! But in a different way I expected…
"Will work" is based on "not working".
Here all GREP Styles used in "Will work":
Uwe

Similar Messages

Writing Style check with Grep styles

Here is an idea.
I make dozens of differents books and journals, and each one has its own editorial pecularities -- some want their quotes double, others single, some want "e-mail" while others insist on "email", or no specific text before an email address. Lots of little things, and I always list as much as possible on the pasteboard -- but of course I have to check these items myself.
Would it be useful if the user was able to put these "rules" in the GREP Style manner into your document (or template!), where it would not mark the found text with a style, but rather with a Spell Check wiggly? (Which, of course, then would need to be picked up by Preflight.)

Well, yeah, but in that sense it's not that different from other stylesheets I have. (For all journals I make, I have at least one "current" updated template.)
One could in general add stuff like this:
\dC (?# wrong -- it should be [digit]°C)
\doC (?# with a superscript 'oh' -- wrong)
\d °C (?# with a space -- wrong)
\d° C (?# space on the other side, also wrong)
\dºC (?# masculine ordinal rather than degree -- also wrong!)
An advantage over a warning wiggly line, rather than just putting all possible variants into the FindChangeList, is that you can always ignore the wiggly -- just like you do when a spell check tags potentially bad spelling (oh okay, "Peter Spier" does not get tagged, but "Jongware" does!).
But I'll forgive Adobe if they can't find the time to squeeze this into CS5, somewhere in the next (hold on--) 05d:23h:32m:07sec.

IDCS5/MAC - GREP Style to uppercase a letter after a dash between words

G'day there.
I'm trying to create a GREP style to uppercase a letter after a dash between words, more specifically where one word starts with a capital and the one after a dash does not e.g. Lorem-ipsum = Lorem-Ipsum
The full story is that there is a standing indesign file used over and over again which data-merges surnames which are in a massive database. The data arrives in uppercase and our mail barcoding software allows us to Title Case certain fields, but the Title Case behaviour has the following results:
* McLeod = Mcleod
* D'Agostino = D'agostino
* Smith-Bunting = Smith-bunting
i've been able to solve the McLeod = Mcleod problem with the following GREP style:
(?<=Mc)\l
and then apply a character style which is nothing more than All Caps.
similarly, i've been able to solve the D'Agostino = D'agostino problem:
(?<=\u')\l
and once again apply the All Caps style to the affected letter. This also solves the O'leary problem to O'Leary.
However, when I try these GREPs to grab the Smith-bunting style issues:
(?<=\u\l+?-)\l or (?<=\u\l{2,}-)\l
the search won't work, nor will it work with regular Find/Change GREP replace... yet the expression \u\l+?-\l will find the block that i'm after.
I could use the search
(?<=\l-)\l
and this will find Smith-bunting = Smith-Bunting... but will also find co-operate = co-Operate (will find two words joined with a dash but starts with a lower case letter).
This is fine if the para style is applied to the line in the address block containing the client's name, but if the name is referred to in a block of text, then that block of text has to have the para style with the GREP style applied, and any dashes between words in that para behave the same way as the name.
yes, it is possible to go into excel and use the =PROPER(affected cell) and fix the Smith-Bunting fields, but i'm trying to create a solution which will work solely in InDesign so that other operators in the office (who aren't familiar with excel) can simply open the standing file and dump in the txt database generated by the mail barcoding software.
there are other names that the mail barcoding's title-case fouls up i.e.
* MacLeod = Macleod
* van der Graaf = Van Der Graaf
* van Diemen = Van Diemen
but a GREP to make Macleod become MacLeod may foul up Mack, Mackie or Macy to become MacK, MacKie or MacY.
I also know that a GREP for the van der or van won't work as the style will only force letters to become All Caps, not uppercase to lower...
Ultimately...
does anyone know a way to GREP style (not a find/change GREP) a fix for Xxxxx-xxxxx = Xxxxx-Xxxxx?
Colly
Colecandoo.

I agree with Haakenlid on his Dirty-Workaround view -- I feel data should be entered the way it oguht to, not altered by some magic GREP styling -- but then again I can also sympathize with your POV re: a fire-and-forget solution even your dumbest operator can't miss.
Oh the rigors of life.
If you are totally, absolutely certain you want to do this by GREP, use this:
(a) Set a To Capitals character style to the string
\b\u\l+\-\l
-- this will magically transform "Hon. Lt. Sir John Forsythe Blunt-object" into "BLUNT-Object".
(b) Then override ( ! ) the first half again with another character style that removes the To Capitals attribute ( ! ):
\b\u\l+-(?=\l)
Notice how this expression is exactly the same as the above one, except for the very last code -- the next lowercase must also be caught, but now using a lookahead so its formatting won't be affected.
This removes the All Caps override from the first halve, changing it from "BLUNT-Object" back to "Blunt-Object".
Lots of side effects, I'm sure. Perhaps it is safer to teach your operators to run a single script.

GREP STYLE, find/change

Hi!
My problem is..
I got these numbers:
17
31.9
32.9
15
in a table/cells. They need to have an .00 and 0 like this:
17.00
31.90
32.90
15.00
I can use this one for that: find: .$ change: $0.00 but then the numbers with 31.9 gets the .00 also.. 31.9.00
Any grep styles for that? multiple functions in the same style`?

A grep style can't change text for you; it can only apply a style to text that matches whatever pattern you set.
I don't think there any one search/replace that will get you where you want to go, but I was able to do it using two search and replace strings:
^\d+(?!\.)\b
$0.00
Finds any number of digits at the beginning of a line, that does NOT have a period following it, and returns the same number with ".00" appended.
^\d+\.\d\b
$00
Finds the remaining instances that have a period and only one digit after it, replaces it with the found text with "0" appended.
This will not touch anything that has a number that has two digits after the period, like 12.95.
Give it a try on a copy of your document, see if it does what you need. Depending on how your document is set up, and what other text is in it, you might also want to highlight the table (or just the relevant columns) and restrict the search to the selection rather than the whole document.

Grep Styles/Nested Styles from the end of the paragraph

Hi -
It appears that grep styles, and nested styles only allow you to apply styles from the beginning of the paragraph until the match.
I'd like to be able to apply styles from the END of the paragraph going back.
This would allow me to apply a non-breaking character style to the end of a paragraph to control "runts". You could make the last two words of a paragraph non breaking, or set a 15 character threshold.
This wouldn't work for all cases, but I'm working with centered, non-justified text, so it should work fine. If the feature were there.
I'm sure there are other things one could do with it as well.
There's a good discussion, and a MANUAL work-around on
http://pdsassoc.com/tipsCS/DeruntingParagraphs/index.html
Tom

I used your suggestion and reviewed the tutorial again.
Sometimes a missing piece of info drives you nuts.
Thanks again.
My clients will love this enhancement.
CS rocks.

Create a GREP-Style with script? [AS] [CS4]

Hi
I'm trying to ad a grep-style to a paragraph style.
It's easy to read/write properties from one that already exists but how can I create a new one?
This is in applescript, CS4
rgds /Mattias

Yep, know about Nested Grep Style.
In AS it:s http://www.indesignscriptingreference.com/CS4/AppleScript/nested-grep-style.htm
If I have a P-style in a document, with a nested grep style applied. I can read and write to that grep style by calling it:
nested grep style 1 of paragraph style "myParaStyle"
read: grep expression of ... -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Where ... is the above line
write: set grep expression of ... to "xyz"
However, if the P-style doesn't have a nested grep style applied, I can't find a way to create/insert one into the P-style.

Apply grep style only once

I can't get my brain around what is probably a very simple problem: I want a paragraph style that applies boldfacing to any character up to an including the first colon in a paragraph. If I used a nested style "through 1 :" the whole graf is bold if there is no colon. So that's out.
A grep style ".+: " seems to work in most cases, but if there's a second colon, the boldfacing is extended to that point. What I think I want is a grep style that works "zero or 1 times" but I cannot figure out how to use the ? to make that happen.

@Jongware – I think Robert wants to limit the GREP style to the first line of a paragraph.
But unfortunately GREP in InDesign does not know about line endings.
In scripting we could do something like what he wants, but comes with some obstacles, because the GREP will apply a character style, that will probably change the line ending. A very dynamic situation…
Example 1
Basic situation:
This is my text here comes the colon: and
here another one: that Robert don't like
to take into account using the GREP style.
Formatted after the GREP style is applied:
This is my text here comes the colon: and
here another one: that Robert don't like
to take into account using the GREP style.
As I understand it, in case that the first colon will leave line one, only the first line should be formatted like this:
(Case 1)
This is my text here comes the first
colon: and here another one: that
Robert don't like to take into account
using the GREP style.
Or should it be, that the style should only be applied, if it's in the first line?
(Case 2):
This is my text here comes the first
colon: and here another one: that
Robert don't like to take into account
using the GREP style.
But what, if the colon in the basic case is at the end of line 1 and will be shifted to line 2 after formatting?
What should happen then?
That is simply not possible to format automatically (dynamically) using GREP styles in InDesign.
Uwe

Grep Styles

How to change this two lines formatted with Bold, regular and italic, and change it to all bold in Grep Style.
I need to do it several times, but how to get the right script in grep to find Bold face at the beginning then a tab
then a regular 11 pts and return plus tab and italic text in parenthesis, see example below:
P. 1. ¿Cuán cierta y segura será la segunda venida de Cristo?
(Hebreos 9:28)

Probably not a candidate for a GREP style. GREP styles are used to apply character styles to text matching the Query string. This looks, at least to me, as if you want to apply a paragraph style. You could maybe use a find/change GREP query to do that, but you can't base it on multiple formatting, only the pattern in the text itself.
Right now, if I had to guess, I would say there is a paragraph style applied that uses either a numbered list (can you select the P.1. ?) and a nested style, or two nested styles to make the page number bold and the verse italic. If that's the case, you might be able to just re-define the style.
Do you really want to remove the italics, or make them bold italics? Do all the paragraphs start with P. and a digit or digits and end at the closing parenthesis?

How can I apply a GREP style to a text variable?

Hello everybody,
I have a question concerning GREP styles inside Paragraph styles.
1. I've created a text variable to generate a recurring title on the upper side of the page based on the main title paragraph style;
2. The recurring title is in Adobe Garamond Small Caps, all letters in lower case, and it is formatted with a paragraph style sheet in the master page;
3. I want to create a GREP style for the recurring title, according to which every time that in the recurring title appear an apostrophe or the double quotes, they are automatically lowered 2pt on the baseline
(I already created the character style sheet that lowers letters of 2pt).
What I need is the correct GREP formula to automatically apply the character style sheet to apostrophes and double quotes, in the line of text generated by the text variable...
Thanks for your help
p.

Hi,
As I said, using Power Headers is the best way to do it.
As Power Headers treats the header as "live text", you can use a simple grep style inserted in the header para style:
… to obtain:
For the sample, I use a char style named "-2pts" with Shift -5 pts and Green color to show you the place of ' and ".
Don't forget that, even Power Headers treats the header as "live text", you only have to update Power Headers to make an update of the headers!
Even I use in another cases Tomaxxi's [JS] and it's a good way to treat the question, Jean-Claude Tremblay's solution is less interesting because the variable used is converted in text. If the variable text content changes, it's more complicated to manage the update!

GREP styles vs style sheets

I've got a lull at work and decided to work on my list and start to learn GREP so that I can use GREP styles.
The first one is a simple one: [[A-Z][A-Z]\S+?] This finds anything inside the brackets that starts with two capital letters. I know it works because I can find "[MT2]" in Find/Change.
OK, so I try it in some ID cs5 text with my first GREP style. It's failing the vast majority of the time. So I try lots of different things to see if I can find a pattern of what works and what doesn't. I've tried just the local formatting of a lone 'graf. I've tried making character and 'graf style sheets that incorporate a GREP style with the new character style, say "change type color to green".
I've looked through the forums and don't see others with my problem so it must be something about me or my document. I've used other documents to eliminate that variable. I've gone through the tutorials and David Blatner's stuff and don't see anything I'm doing differently.
When I format some text with a character and 'graf style sheet, it fails. BUT when I change the character style sheet of the source text to "[None]" it works. I've tried starting with text that is '[None]' and a 'graf style sheet of Normal, it works.
But starting with text styled with '[None]' character and a formal 'graf style sheet with a GREP Style, it fails. But when I change the 'graf style sheet to ]'Basic Paragraph]' it works.
I'm trying to find a pattern here, so to speak, and the only thing that has a chance to succeed is setting the character style sheet to 'None.' I just don't see than anyone who uses GREP styles has any problems like I do.
What do you reckon I'm overlooking? I've spent today trying to find what works and doesn't. As it is, I can't recommend this to my co-workers.

Rule of thumb for applying styles is basic formats for the entire paragraph should be defined in the paragraph style. If some selected bit of text needs to be formatted differnently, then you apply a character style (or, if you must, a local formatting override). With Nested Styles and GREP styles, ID has very powerful tools for applying character styles to selected text WITHIN the confines of the paragraph style definition. Most programs don't have that capability.
Should you apply the character syle as a nested or GREP style, or perhaps through Find/Change, or just by manually selecting text and applying the style? The answer to that will depend on a few variables. Should the particular string ALWAYS have a particular set of attributes, no matter what? Find/Change or local selection is the way to go. Character styles applied that way will survive even if the underlying paragraph style is changed to match the character style, then changed again. If the style should be applied to a string in a particular position in a paragraph, even if that position might move around a bit, a nested style is probably the way to go. If you want to make changes to text that matches a particular pattern, wherever it falls, when the surrounding text is a particular style, a GREP style is the answer.
GREP styles are very powerful, but they also use far more in terms of resources than applying a character style using other methods. I've seen reoprts of ID getting bogged down by too many GREP styles.

Attempting to create a GREP Style

I'm trying to make a GREP style for one of my paragraph styles, that will take the text from the beginning of a line until a colon and set a character style to it to bold that part.
Example:
Step 1: Take bread
Step 2: Take peanut butter
Step 3: Spread peanut butter on bread
I don't think I've been getting the syntax right. I've put ^\:~h and ^:~h into the 'to text' box, thinking this meant "Beginning of line until the character ':' and end" but neither of those have given me the results I want. Thanks in advance for the help!

Prismatus wrote:
Your response worked for me. I had tried using a wildcard before the ones I posted, but only put the . in, assuming it would cover more than just one character. I assume the +? covers all characters until the colon shows up, yes?
No, it's slightly more complicated than that (sorry!). By default, GREP is Greedy -- that means, if you use this
^.+:
GREP will think that the Any Character wildcard may be repeated as much as possible (that's the '+') before it needs to match the colon. What this means is that it will work just as you expected for
Step 1: This is a single line.
but will go out of its mind with this
Step 2: what will happen now? Well, contrary to what you were expecting, the entire line will be marked bold, all because everything up to the very last : will be matched!
The bold bits accurately shows what happens! Another example would be this:
\d+
which for a string of "123" will not match just the first digit, then the second, then the third, but all of them in a single long go. By default, GREP will grab as much as it possibly can.
Adding a question mark behind the "Repeat Me" character reverts this behavior to Non-Greedy behavior, and as such GREP will match as little as humanly possible:
\d+?
will then match just the "1" in "123".
Prismatus wrote:
I also like the be literal part, but I was wondering what you would have instead of \d if you had more than nine steps, or if you had substeps (1a, 1b, etc.).
That's just a case of adding more specifiers. To match one or more digits, you need this:
^Step \d+:
The '+', again, will allow a repetition of the "digit" code. In this case you don't have to add a question mark, because there is no way this could run out of control; first, it will only match digits, and second, these digits must be followed by a colon.
And if you may or may not have a single lowercase character following the digit (but still before the colon), you'd use the Any Lowercase Character code and the Zero or Once repetition specifier:
^Step \d+\l?:
(that's a lowercase ell.) You see the question mark meaning Something Entirely Different here? It's only a Non-Greedy marker when immediately following another repetition code, one of these
* (zero or more)
+ (once or more)
? (zero or once)
{4,8} (or any other set of numbers -- this is at least 4 and at most 8 times)
Uh, by the way, that makes this
abc??
a valid GREP. It will match "ab" or "abc", and then always select the shortest possible match of these two, which is then the "ab" one. ... Uh. I'm pretty sure this may be useful, some time in the future.

Creating a GREP style Help Needed

I would like to set-up a style using GREP expression(s) that would do the following:
Everything preceding an em dash (including the em dash and two spaces after the em dash) would be set to bold-italic, AND everything in the paragraph that begins with the word "NOTE:" until the end of the paragraph would be regular-italic.
Here is a sample of the kind of text I want to format with one style:
OPERATOR PANEL - The operator panel is located on the right-hand electrical enclosure. NOTE: Not all equipment will have the same operator panel. Refer to schematics for additional information.
"OPERATOR PANEL - " would be all bold (or bold italic). The body text is regular. the "NOTE: Not all .... " to the end would be regular-italic.
Any help or direction to a web-site with examples would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
RPP

It's easier than you think.
Peter's suggestion of a regular nesting style might work, except that it's
i always
applied to each paragraph you apply it to. That's just what the Grep styles are for:
i conditional
stuff.
The 1st half: Apply Style: Bolded To Text: ^.*? ~=
(there should be another space after the '=')
The 2nd half: Apply Style: Italicized To Text: NOTE:.*$
These are both pretty much basic GREP expressions -- except for the "~=", that's Adobe's --, so just about any google to a GREP repository can explain them. I already knew the basics, but
this page taught me some new tricks.

How to end grep styles?

Grep styles (in Paragraph style) is one of the fabulous option in indesign CS4, but i am having one doubt that do we have any option to end grep style at any particular instant like we have "END NESTED STYLE HERE" to end nested style.

You should state the full string to match in your GREP query. If it matches all, then all gets marked. If you don't want it to match all, you need to adjust the GREP query.
Alternatively, if you feel you have to "prematurely end" your character style, you can use a nested style instead.

Grep style shortest match (non-greedy) modifier ignored

I'm looking for confirmation on a possible bug that I've had problems with from InDesign version 5.5 up through the current CC 10.0.0.70.
What I'm trying to do is apply a character style via a grep rule in a paragraph style that matches everything up until the first colon in a block of text. The goal is to make that text bold. My grep rule is
.+?:
which means match one or more of any character, shortest match (non-greedy in grep terminology), followed by a colon. But the non-greedy modifier is being ignored and it's matching all of the text up until the last colon.
Here's a screen shot.
I've come up with a work around, but it would be nice for it to work properly. I'll report it as a bug if others confirm having the same problem. Thanks.

Thanks, Peter! I'm so used to the way grep works outside of InDesign that I forgot it would look for multiple instances within the paragraph. Technically, I did limit it to the first occurrence by using the question mark after the plus. (If you use any of the shortest match options in the drop-down menu that's what you get.)
But anchoring it to the beginning of the line with ^ did the trick.

Grep Styles - Conflicting - "^" not working in lookbehind and more

Hi,
Still fighting my way in the jungle of paragraph grep styles.
In InDesign CS5 by the way.
I import text from DB and they all come in the same.
I need to use the same paragraph style to all paragraphs.
I really don't want to use find-change since that would mess up the xml holding the data.
Example-text explanation:
• All sizes are separated by ", - "
• …… = tab
• Not all rows have tab
• Sizes can be both numeric, letters, contain "/" and "-" and """ and " " (space) and yes indeed a "," comma!! (and every other idiotic combination you culd think of.)
• When only 2 posts in a row - should be separated by a ", " = (Comma-space)
• When more than 2 posts i a row - all posts but first and last should be hidden and separated by " - " (space-dash-space)
I have tried numerous combinations to get them all but they always conflict with each other.
Bugger!
I really shouldn't be impossible.
Is it possible in Paragraph grep styles to "catch" "any character but these" and kind of make a character-set like [!not this character] (= [!a|b|c] )
Is it possible to count the number of posts in a row? ( like... if more than 2 then hide...bla bla)
All sizes are separated by the same ", - " and sometimes I want to hide them, and somtimes I want to use one of them...
Is there any kind of "if-else" thing that can be used??
My original idea was to be able to catch them by using ^-combinations for beginning of paragraph and matching with tha linebreak and tab but it seems as if that don't always work when using positive or negative look-behind-ahead.
Oh, I'm blabbering. Sorry.
Any hints or pointers would be greatly appreciated.
/K
A) Got this - Original text
Same text but this is my Goal!
134/140, - 146/152, - 158/164……….299,-
134/140, - 146/152……….299,-
38, - 40, - 42, - 44, - 46……….399,-
38, - 40……….399,-
XS, - S, - M, - L, - XL……….399,-
XS, - S, - M, - L
XS, - M
XS, - S, - M, - L, - XL……….399,-
B 70, - 75, - 80, - 90, - 95……….199,-
B 70, - 75……….199,-
Medium-Wide 17”, - 17,5”……….995,-
Normal, - X-Wide……….999,-
16 mm 95, - 105, - 115, - 125, - 135, - 145…......99,-
16 mm 95, - 105……....99,-
134/140 - 158/164……….299,-
134/140, 146/152……….299,-
38 - 46……….399,-
38, 40……….399,-
XS - XL……….399,-
XS - L
XS, M
XS - XL……….399,-
B 70 - 95……….199,-
B 70, 75……….199,-
Medium-Wide 17”, 17,5”……….995,-
Normal, X-Wide……….999,-
16 mm 95 - 145…......99,-
16 mm 95, 105……....99,-
GrepStyle
Result wanted
,\s(?<=,\s)-\s.+(?=\s-)
Red undelined text will be hidden
(Got this)
134/140, - 146/152, - 158/164……….299,-
134/140, - 146/152……….299,-
38, - 40, - 42, - 44, - 46……….399,-
38, - 40……….399,-
XS, - S, - M, - L, - XL……….399,-
XS, - S, - M, - L
XS, - M
XS, - S, - M, - L, - XL……….399,-
B 70, - 75, - 80, - 90, - 95……….199,-
B 70, - 75……….199,-
Medium-Wide 17”, - 17,5”……….995,-
Normal, - X-Wide……….999,-
16 mm 95, - 105, - 115, - 125, - 135, - 145…......99,-
16 mm 95, - 105……....99,-
Need this to not conflict with other grep
blue underlined text needs to be hidden.
134/140, - 146/152, - 158/164……….299,-
134/140, - 146/152……….299,-
38, - 40, - 42, - 44, - 46……….399,-
38, - 40……….399,-
XS, - S, - M, - L, - XL……….399,-
XS, - S, - M, - L
XS, - M
XS, - S, - M, - L, - XL……….399,-
B 70, - 75, - 80, - 90, - 95……….199,-
B 70, - 75……….199,-
Medium-Wide 17”, - 17,5”……….995,-
Normal, - X-Wide……….999,-
16 mm 95, - 105, - 115, - 125, - 135, - 145…......99,-
16 mm 95, - 105……....99,-

There are error messages in the errorconsole. 
Firefox ignores the css rules because there is a syntax error at line 18: 
-->> table.heading {{background-image:url('barline.jpg'); 
please remove one of the opening brackets here 
You can go to Mozilla Developer Network to learn CSS. 
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/learn/css

Nested Line Style affecting my GREP style

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