Publisher: Flexible Width Text Frames

[deebz]

Hello.

Does anyone know if it's possible to create auto/flexible width text frames in publisher? I've looked high and low and haven't uncovered anything thus far.

I've used them in the past for running heads set on the master page without text. Configured to take a single line of text ranged left or right with an inset left and right.

Possible or not as yet?

[Old Bruce]

Pretty sure this is not possible. There is the Art Text tool which may do what you want.

I occasionally use a Text Frame for Running heads and set them pretty much the width of the page and set up the text where I want by using offsets in those text frames, that way page numbers and section names will always (almost always, there are always outliers) be in the proper place on the page.

[thomaso]

6 hours ago, deebz said:

auto/flexible width text frames in publisher?

How exactly would you expect the frame width to behave? Do you mean the frame should not cause any line break? In that case the Art Text Tool does work like this – but it doesn't allow to create an empty text frame, e.g. on a master page. To use art text as template frame on a master page you would need to insert a character to make the frame available on the document pages to get filled with their actual content. (UI issue: if you fill the art text frame only with an invisible character, e.g. space, then the art text frame is hardly or not selectable later.)

But why doesn't it work for you to create an empty text frame with the Frame Text Tool, set to its max. width, incl. the wanted left/right insets?

[deebz]

On reflection the use case for this is quite rare. I used the feature once in a design where I had a series of full bleed images and running heads. The design included a knockout behind the text to allow the text to be read - like a highlight - and the knockout’s max-width was related to the length of the words in the head plus padding left and right. Setting a max width wasn’t possible as some heads ran long and others short and i wanted the Knock-out to grow and shrink accordingly.

Not a problem, if I wanted to achieve that look in publisher I can work around it manually.

i simply wondered if the function was there or if I was somehow missing it.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, deebz said:

knockout behind the text to allow the text to be read - like a highlight - and the knockout’s max-width was related to the length of the words in the head plus padding left and right.

Highlight: If I understand right you can achieve this with a background color applied to the text, either as character property or as paragraph decoration. The text background color may be defined with transparency. The frame itself doesn't get a fill color. The frame's inset is entirely independent (with an according frame positioning you don't need it at all).

Knockout: Not sure what you mean. There are various ways …   text highlight, mask, knockout.afpub