Snapping with a text decoration. Am I doing this the right way?

[james948]

I can turn of snapping and do it manually but I'm wondering whether I'm doing this the right way: with a text decoration and an indent of -7.8

I'm trying to learn best practices (something I've not done for many many other applications!)

 

[GaryLearnTech]

After a long hiatus I'm only now getting back up to speed with Publisher, so I could be wrong, but I don't think you can get snapping to the decoration.

Rather than set a negative offset on the decoration, why not leave it at 0 and instead indent the text inside the frame?  The end result will maintain the gap between the vertical bar and your text, but function as expected.

[Old Bruce]

On 3/13/2021 at 2:41 AM, james948 said:

I can turn of snapping and do it manually but I'm wondering whether I'm doing this the right way: with a text decoration and an indent of -7.8

I'm trying to learn best practices (something I've not done for many many other applications!)

If you are wanting to have the decoration in the Pull Quote "snap" to the edge of the of the main text frame then you could make your text frame for the pull quote wider and have an offset for the pull quote and set the decoration's offset to 0 but have it for the Frame, not the text.

pull quote.afpub

[james948]

On 3/13/2021 at 9:59 PM, GaryLearnTech said:

After a long hiatus I'm only now getting back up to speed with Publisher, so I could be wrong, but I don't think you can get snapping to the decoration.

Rather than set a negative offset on the decoration, why not leave it at 0 and instead indent the text inside the frame?  The end result will maintain the gap between the vertical bar and your text, but function as expected.

This doesn't seem to work for me. How are you indenting the text inside the frame? 

[james948]

9 minutes ago, james948 said:

This doesn't seem to work for me. How are you indenting the text inside the frame? 

AH! Left indent!

[james948]

21 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

If you are wanting to have the decoration in the Pull Quote "snap" to the edge of the of the main text frame then you could make your text frame for the pull quote wider and have an offset for the pull quote and set the decoration's offset to 0 but have it for the Frame, not the text.

pull quote.afpub

That's so strange. When I do that; literally copied your version, the decoration comes with the text; i.e the text and the line indent!

[james948]

Still having a few problems. The text and the decoration don't seem to move independently. 

Also, when I double click at the bottom middle grab handle, isn't it meant to resize it to fit all the text? Currently it resizes it to just fit one line of text which I find odd. 

I wasn't but I'm now using the latest version from the app store (1.9.1)

I didn't realise I wasn't before!

 

[Old Bruce]

4 minutes ago, james948 said:

Still having a few problems. The text and the decoration don't seem to move independently. 

 

The decoration will move over to the left and be up against the text frame if you go to the Decorations section of the Paragraph Style and give it a ten mm offset to the Text, OR a zero mm offset to the Frame.

[james948]

Ah. Yes. Paragraph Style. I think the problem is that I'm not understanding the styles. 

There seem to be three/four

1. Character Style

2. Paragraph Style

3. Group Style (Presume this is both of the above) 

4. Style Style

The fourth confuses me slightly because it contains all of them and text frame style? And it can't be updated; just replaced and then you must replace all the different parts that have that Style style. 

Is there a good explainer on this? Tried YT but can only really find videos on either character style or paragraph style and not the two and how they interact with the third and  fourth. 

 

[Old Bruce]

Number four is something I never use. It is for pretty much everything that can be drawn on a page.

I set up a Group style for broad categories, there is the Base which I use for the Paragraph Style which will take up most of the publication. 

Headings gets its own Group.

Captions, Notes, Tables, Pull Quotes/Callouts, Tables of Contents, Index, Bibliography.... may all get their own Groups.

These are groups of text that are going to be sufficiently different from each other that it is worth my while to set them up so I can easily play with fonts size spacing and weight etc. and know the only those styles in the that group are going to changed. Each Paragraph Style within a group may have only one thing changed, most of the changes will be in the spacing section First Line Indent, Space Before or After,  then there is the flow section Start at ... Keep together, Keep with next x lines....

Groups have pretty much everything set explicitly and then the Paragraph and Character Styles will have very little to change. For example the Character Style Italic has no change for everything except for the fact that the Italic checkbox is ticked, Bold only has the Font Weight set to Bold, everything else is set to inherit. 

Magazines may have no use for Groups beyond a Base as all the Articles will have one Main-text style, Heading style, caption style which are unique to that article.

[james948]

25 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Number four is something I never use. It is for pretty much everything that can be drawn on a page.

I set up a Group style for broad categories, there is the Base which I use for the Paragraph Style which will take up most of the publication. 

Headings gets its own Group.

Captions, Notes, Tables, Pull Quotes/Callouts, Tables of Contents, Index, Bibliography.... may all get their own Groups.

These are groups of text that are going to be sufficiently different from each other that it is worth my while to set them up so I can easily play with fonts size spacing and weight etc. and know the only those styles in the that group are going to changed. Each Paragraph Style within a group may have only one thing changed, most of the changes will be in the spacing section First Line Indent, Space Before or After,  then there is the flow section Start at ... Keep together, Keep with next x lines....

Groups have pretty much everything set explicitly and then the Paragraph and Character Styles will have very little to change. For example the Character Style Italic has no change for everything except for the fact that the Italic checkbox is ticked, Bold only has the Font Weight set to Bold, everything else is set to inherit. 

Magazines may have no use for Groups beyond a Base as all the Articles will have one Main-text style, Heading style, caption style which are unique to that article.

Gotcha. Thanks. 

But what could a paragraph style conflict with a character style? And what does it mean when it gives the me the option of selecting the type. 

And then why does it say "No Style" instead of just having nothing selected. Presumably the below image means that the selected object has the Paragraph Style character style "Quote" [in which I actually do stipulate the character] but no Character style. See that's where i get confused. I'm stipulating the character style from within the paragraph style.  

I also find the lack of a text frame style very odd. Which means I have to use the "Style" style. 

Finally; sometimes I discover I've made changes to my text in the font formatting panel and I don't want that to be the case but clicking the text and then the Style doesn't seem to override the changes I've made in the formatting panel. Or perhaps I'm doing something wrong. 

 

[Old Bruce]

Paragraph Style affects every single letter in the paragraph.

Character Style affects the individual letter(s) you apply it to. There are some automatic applications, if you have the text caret in the middle of a "w|ord" then the Character style will apply to all the characters in that word.

There is a menu item Text > Reapply Text Styles which will do just that, then there is the little rewind or reset or revert arrow in the Text Styles pane. Also worth noting is the + symbol which will indicate an override on/in a Text style.

[james948]

AMAZING thank you so much @Old Bruce

[james948]

Just want to confirm; there's no way to set a Text Frame style without using the Style style is there? 

So if I want my pull quote to have 10mm inset at the top and 10mm inset at the bottom I can't do this without setting it as a style and then applying the Style style and the Paragraph style to each of my pull quotes.

Presumably the Style style contains everything but, in case I want to change anything (except inset which i can't?) it's best to have the two applied, right? 

 

[Old Bruce]

You may be best served by setting up a Text Style Paragraph Style called Pull Quote with the Left and Right offsets and then make an Asset called Pull Quote Text Frame with the Top and Bottom offsets. This way you can have the text decoration snapping to the edge of the frame which you want for alignment to the columns of text.

Or ... you may be best served by making unique frames and freely modify the text on the fly with [no style] applied to the text.

It really does depend on the job at hand. If you are going to use more than one instance of  styled text then make a text style, if you are needing text frames with specific offsets and sizes then make an asset. Just remember to use descriptive names for these items.

[james948]

On 3/18/2021 at 4:09 PM, Old Bruce said:

You may be best served by setting up a Text Style Paragraph Style called Pull Quote with the Left and Right offsets and then make an Asset called Pull Quote Text Frame with the Top and Bottom offsets. This way you can have the text decoration snapping to the edge of the frame which you want for alignment to the columns of text.

Or ... you may be best served by making unique frames and freely modify the text on the fly with [no style] applied to the text.

It really does depend on the job at hand. If you are going to use more than one instance of  styled text then make a text style, if you are needing text frames with specific offsets and sizes then make an asset. Just remember to use descriptive names for these items.

Thanks!