I need to be able to easily do something like this in ID… have some light blue text, with a 3pt dark blue stroke, then a 5pt white stroke outside of that, then a 2pt light blue stroke outside that, then a 1pt dark blue stroke outside that. AND the text needs to stay editable.
So, multiple variable widths of stroke on text, with the ability to apply different colors to each stroke… and the text stays editable.
Nice ask @Mojo . Although your ask sounds fairly good, this would be a very specific usecase according to me. Can you let me know why would you want to have such strokes on text? Does this is something which would be needed by most of the designers?
I use the drawing tools in type authoring apps, like FontLab and Glyphs, quite a bit. The drawing tools in Illustrator are much more robust, but there’s one feature in the font apps that I really like much better than how Illustrator (or Affinity Designer) does it.
So let’s say there’s a shape made from a bunch of curves. Let’s also say the curves in the shape path are a little awkward and could be made simpler, smoother and a bit more harmonious.
Fixing this problem might mean removing some of the anchor points and readjusting the shape. However, removing an anchor point in Illustrator collapses the curve. In the type drawing apps, removing an anchor point results in the app recalculating the control handles of the adjacent anchor points to create a more harmonious approximation of the curve that was there to begin with.
It’s difficult to explain and even more difficult to explain why this matters. I never realized it was even an issue before I became familiar with the type drawing apps and noticed how often I came to rely on it for fine-tuning curved paths.
Let me rephrase the problem… my clients are constantly rewriting their text during the design and layout phase, and I need to be able to go back and edit everything. The stroke tool is frustrating because I’d like to be able to use different Types of strokes on text in ID. Like Thick-thin, etc. But in order to access the Types choices, I need to convert the text to outlines. This is inconvenient, and yes I think this is something needed by most designers.
So really, you’re asking for Illustrator Appearance Panel functionality in InDesign. I think this is exactly the type of thing Adobe wouldn’t, or won’t, do anytime soon. They already give you this feature in their suite of applications, and it’s place-able among them (either as place/link or Smart Object), so why would they needlessly bloat InDesign with a duplicate? That’s not to say I think having an Illustrator-style Appearance control concept in InDesign wouldn’t be useful. I guess the point I’m making is that it’s not new or as-yet unattainable.
That I totally get. I’d like it if Illustrator had a toggle for ‘preserve curvature’ behavior. Sometimes I want it the way it is, but other times it would be great to simplify without re-shape.
HB, you can’t apply that kind of appearance attribute to a stroke on live text. Not even in Illustrator. You have to outline the text first. Or stack multiple copies. (or at least you can’t in pre-cc19, haven’t checked that one yet.)
Yes, exactly. You said it better than I did.
Technically, you can’t do the thick-thin on a single stroke like Indesign’s Stroke Style feature, but you can stack up strokes to produce the same/similar result…
Yes, that would be ideal. 
I doubt many other designers have a need for multiple outlines around live type, short of, maybe, recreating psychedelic posters or Op Art from the 1960s. This is the kind of specialty thing that might be better added as a third-party plugin rather than a core feature.
HB, did that set the strokes to the outside of the letter?
I’ll have to look harder if it does.
Just B, you’d be surprised how often such an effect is wanted for people who decorate their cars and 4-wheelers and boats, oh my.
When I have to do it, I use Signlab directly rather than trying to do the stacking in Illustrator.
So many things signwares do better than Illy.
The Adobe philosphy is to have the different apps to have their own specific qualities.
Photoshop: pixel manipuùation
Illustrator: vector manipulation. Like adding more than one stroke or fill to an object with the appearance panel
InDesign: organise your workflow in the layout process. Combining images, text and other materials to create a global layout
If you would have all those abilities in one app, that app will be bloated with an excess of possibilities and it will crash all the time, like CorelDraw does.
I know there are people that write a text in Excell, Is that the correct app to use? I don"t think so but some do
No, as you already know, only center-strokes are applicable to live type, BUT the Appearance panel does allow you to re-order things, so dragging the fill to the top of the stack allows you to hide the inward halves of strokes (behind the fill) and make it appear as though the strokes are built out-only.
This effectively replicates the old trick of placing an un-stroked copy on top.
Ah hah. Gotcha. Thanks!
Now I have to check that out a bit. Might be an interesting mess on expansion.
Yeah, “interesting” is one word for it. Expand Appearance just bust it up into 4 (or whatever the total of fills/strokes was) live point-type objects, so subsequent Expand commands just outline them like any other type objects. You end up with a stack as you’d expect, but it’s nothing non-standard, so several Pathfinder clicks can get you down to a single level.
Yes!
That’s my biggest concern with these kinds of features. They’re useful to some, but they’re specialty needs. Instead of being useful for most, they bloat out the CC applications with bugginess, complexity and disc space.
Rather than Adobe continuing to add these kinds of capabilities as core features, I wish their three big applications (Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign) stuck to the core basics each were designed for.
I’d much prefer that Adobe designed and coded these specialty features as add-ons that could be easily installed from the cloud and deactivated as needed by the end user — similar in concept, I suppose, to the way Adobe allows its users to install and remove Typekit fonts.
This way, when a few people need the ability to stack a dozen outlines around live type or whatever, they can scroll through the list of hundreds of Adobe-approved add-ons, then pick and install the one needed for the job.
Rohit, are you with Adobe?
This is a road they are taking with their Sensei idea.
It’s an idea about Artificial Intelligence and machine learning.
In the future they are going to learn from your habits (use of your tools, habits of creating things and so on…) From this knowledge you will have a limited toolbox r an expanded one of you use a lot of tools.
In the latest edition of Illustrator CC 2019 they already made the first step with the limited standard toolbar.
Software that assumes ideas and gives you only the options that are adequate for a general result is like shopping for pre created shapes, templates and so on.
Bye Bye Graphic Designer
Rohit doesn’t seem to want to answer that question lol 
However, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say no
