Indesign bug: Characters in full-length lines disappear

[TYPPIET]

Indesign 3.0. Two strange things happen when a line of text reaches the maximum length/width of the column.
1. The second to ± the fifth or sixth character is not displayed on the screen, and the cursor cannot be put in this line of text.
2. Everything on screen is normal, but in print the second to ± the forth character dissappers.
Does anyone recocnize this bug and is there a solution? This makes Indesign utterlu unreliable, because the screen cannot be trusted anymore.

 

[jmgalvin]

You might check Text Frame Options under the Object menu and see what the right inset is, if any, and if you have Ignore Text Wrap checked. You could also look at Paragraph pallette, with all options shown, and see if you have a right indent set there, which combined with Ignore text wrap, could make things disappear. The problem could also occur if you have a paragraph style with a right indent and Ignore Wrap checked.

If things are alright on screen but cut off at print, it usuually means that you're outside the print margins of the printer. In the Indesign Print window/Setup and look at scaling. You might also click the Printer button and take a look at the setting of the printer itseld, in addition to the ID print settings.

If you added printers marks to the print, this increases the size of the paper - to allow for trim. If you're printing to the full capacity of the printer, the area for marks will result in cutting off portions of the document. To run proofs with marks for letter or legal size, you usually have to run up the proof on 11X17 or so paper.

 

[TYPPIET]

Thanks, but the problem seems to be a bit more complicated.
There is no indent/inset in the text. Also the ignore textwrap is not checked. All the text is in one textframe, no other frames around.
The problem has also no relation to print margins; the problem occurs in the middle of a page. It looks something like this when printed (and I mean offset professional printing):

H hat's up my good friend Galvin of the Tek Forum

When on screen it has the full line of text

Hello what's up my good friend Galvin of the Tek Forum

The characters just dissappear and leave a blank space exactly the width of the original characters, like the characters have become transparant.

Strange thing indeed!

 

[jmgalvin]

My only guess here is that it could be a corrupt font or, in OSX, font cache. Theoretically, the missing letter would have to be ones that do not appear anywhere else. In the case of your example the letters e,l,o, W could not appear anywhere else.

You could try changing the font and run off a quick proof, or make a pdf and run the proof.

if this happens with everything, as opposed to one doc, I'd first try trashing ID Preferences and see if that helps.

 

[shell01]

Hello! I am new to this forum, and I am so glad I found someone else have the same issues as me. Not that I wish it on anyone, cause it has been frustrating.

So TYPPIET, did you ever figure out how to solve your problem? I just finished a 356 page catalog and this issue made me very insecure. I would open a page, make a correction to one block of copy, print and all of a sudden a chunk of copy would be missing (or not showing). I would open the page again and sometime it would be reflected in the ID file and sometimes not. If I opened the box a hair (width-wise), my copy would return. It looked like this:

1. The toaster is made of stainless steel and
is available in red, black etc. (okay)

1. The stainless steel and
is available in red, black etc. (my problem)

(just a side note-when If I look at my page at 75%, you can see a grey bar shooting to the left of the document from the copy block in question. Almost like the text is going outside the box onto the pasteboard. Very strange.)

Any soluctions out there?

 

[TYPPIET]

So i am not the only one with this problem. What you describe is exactly what happened with my documents (including the grey bar shooting to the left).
Very strange indeed.
Unfortunately none of the solutions suggested above was useful: no corrupt fonts etc.
What did work, was re-installing InDesign completely. Since then i have had no problems anymore. So maybe trashing the preferences helped, but the mystery in itself is unsolved.

Good luck.

 

[shell01]

Thanks for your help! I will give it a try.

The weird thing is that I did one catalog-and didn't have the problem.

Reloaded the whole Adobe suite and then I now I have this problem. I thought there was some preference that I just wasn't seeing. Oh well, I will try trashing my preference. My fingers are crossed.

I have had several weird happenings, but I will post a new topic for those.

Have a good one!
Thanks again!