Find and change, GREP and object searches in Layout
Search text, GREP patterns, glyphs and objects with saved queries in Layout by Zaweba, and change fills, lines and styles across a whole document at once.
Find/change in Layout by Zaweba goes well beyond swapping one word for another. It has four kinds of search: plain text, GREP patterns, glyphs and objects. Each can be saved as a query and used again. Between them, they handle most of the repetitive correction a long document needs.
Text and GREP
Text search finds and changes words and phrases, the familiar find and replace. Use it for a renamed product, a corrected spelling of a name, or a phrase the client wants changed throughout.
GREP finds patterns rather than exact text. Instead of searching for one phone number, you can describe what any phone number looks like and find them all. Instead of finding double spaces one by one, a pattern can catch any run of spaces. GREP is a pattern language with its own rules, and it rewards a little learning. Even a handful of simple patterns, such as repeated spaces or a space before punctuation, saves a lot of time on supplied copy.
Glyph search
Glyph search finds a particular glyph in a font, a specific character shape, rather than a letter. It's useful when a font has alternates, or when a symbol needs replacing with a different one throughout a document.
Object search
Find/change objects searches frames and shapes by kind, fill, line, weight, object style and layer, and changes them. If every pull quote box has a pale blue fill and the client wants pale green, find by fill and change. If keylines are 0.5 pt and should be 0.75 pt, find by weight. If frames were formatted by hand and should use an object style, find them and apply it.
This is a big time saver in a long catalogue or magazine, where the same change would otherwise mean visiting dozens of pages.
Saved queries
Any of these searches can be saved as a query. A set of saved queries for the cleanup you do on every job, double spaces, straight quotes, spaces before full stops, becomes a toolkit you reuse. Saved queries can also be run in order as a sequence, as one undo step, which suits a standard tidy up for supplied text.
Searching safely
Test before changing all. Find the first match, look at it, change it, then find the next. Once you're sure the search matches only what you mean, change all.
Narrow the scope. Searching one story is safer than searching a whole document when the change only applies to one article.
Be careful with short words. A search for "art" also matches the middle of "start" and "part", so look at a few results before changing them all, or make the search more specific.
With GREP, test patterns on a copy of a story first. A pattern that matches more than you expect can change a lot in one click; undo will put it right, but it's better not to need it.
Find/change and the rest of the app
Find/change sits alongside the other text tools. With the story editor for reading and spell check for slips, it covers most text cleanup without leaving Layout by Zaweba.
