Digital Workshop

Is it possible to have master text objects?

For instance, I have a video player that appears several times in th e publication.

So the words play, pause etc are written on each slide.

Now I'm making it in another language, I have to alter each text box.

If this were a master text object, (like a photoshop smart object) I could have just made the change once.

Thanks, Linda

I am not familiar with ad-obe PS. As for a Text master-object, I think there is not one. There are several ways to accomplish what you want.

1. you can of course use a Master Page, and also have nested MPs. That pretty much assumes you want the MP content always appearing in same positions on the page (unless you program it otherwise).

2. The simplest solution I can think of is to Insert Variable(s) into the text box or text boxes. Then it is a simple matter of changing the default values for those variables (using the Properties >>> Variables). I wonder how-well this might work when you have fonts/character-sets quite different from Latin/Western.

3. A variation on #2 is to so some scripting. I won't detail it here, but if you knew you were going to handle six or ten languages, you can create lookup tables --- e.g., an INI file is one way. Using several off-page Listboxes is another. Then it is easy to "choose" a language, done either by the developer, or even allowing the User to select.

[ETA:] You could also try Search & Replace in the Opus Editor. The Advanced option will show you which objects on which Pages had matching text to change. It could get complicated sorting it out if your other text objects contain similar text.

Script and variables don't support Unicode - so you'd need a custom font.

If it's just labels and the like, then why not use PNGs and either just swap out the images or use a dynamic path to switch between languages.

Mack

Yes, I'm just sorry we didn't think that through before writing "Team 1" "Team 2" etc on every one of those 40 question screens - someone else is sitting here patiently replacing it now!!

Thank you so much for your suggestions - all food for thought.

As you might have guessed, I'm actually working in Arabic, so using variables isn't working (the characters are getting scrambled).

Russell here has been helping me a lot recently, and I was going to ask him to help with table look ups for foreign languages next.

However, while this will be ideal for European languages, as Arabic reads right to left, and is therefore right-justified, often the physical position of text on the screen needs to change between English and Arabic versions as well - so I need to consider this too.

I'm learning as fast as I can to deal with Arabic, as we have a lot of work to do in it!

I think that , for repeated things like video controls, using a png instead of text is probably the answer - I wish I'd thought of this before I programmed 240 English pages, as it'll be a long weekend!!!