When using the "Fit Box to Text" trick, is it possible to leave a bit of padding around the text?

[tcwiggins03]

I'm merging a bunch of pages and want to have a title box with a border at the top of each page that says "Title # 1", "Title # 2" etc for over a thousand pages.

I want the text box to resize with the text as the numbers in the title get bigger, so I used the trick where you double click the center handles of the text box frame.

However, this method seems to make the box exactly the size of the text with no extra space between the border and the text.

Is there a way to add some padding between the text and the text frame while still having the "auto-size" function turned on?

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

55 minutes ago, tcwiggins03 said:

Is there a way to add some padding between the text and the text frame while still having the "auto-size" function turned on?

There's no "auto-size" function, if you're thinking it is some kind of setting. When you double-click a Text Frame center handle it is an immediate resize action, not a setting that continues to be applied after that. You can get it to be applied to all of your pages at once if you use the trick on a Master Page that is applied to all of them, but that will result in text overflow on any pages where the text takes more room than the text on that Master Page.

Why not just make the Text Frame big enough on your Master Page (if you're using one) to hold the text with the biggest number?

[Joachim_L]

7 hours ago, tcwiggins03 said:

Is there a way to add some padding between the text and the text frame while still having the "auto-size" function turned on?

In APu you can set a padding via the Text Frame panel, in AP and AD not. Within AP and AD you have to do some extra work. Use the Paragraph panel to add Left and Right Indent and Space before Paragraph and from the pulldown Use space before select Only at Column Top or Always and add a soft or hard linebreak at the end of the text frame.

[lacerto]

If your titles are part of a longer text flow, one possibility would also be using Paragraph Decoration with a paragraph text style:

 

Title Decoration.afpub

[tcwiggins03]

15 hours ago, Joachim_L said:

In APu you can set a padding via the Text Frame panel, in AP and AD not. Within AP and AD you have to do some extra work. Use the Paragraph panel to add Left and Right Indent and Space before Paragraph and from the pulldown Use space before select Only at Column Top or Always and add a soft or hard linebreak at the end of the text frame.

In APu I couldn't find any way to set padding via the Text Frame panel. I did try using Left and Right Indents as well as Space Before Paragraph set to Always, but these did not seem to make the text box resize at all. For example if I added an inch of Space Before Paragraph it just pushed the text down outside of the box. It didn't make the box resize to always have an inch of padded space between the text and text frame border which is the kind of thing I'm looking to do.

14 hours ago, Lagarto said:

If your titles are part of a longer text flow, one possibility would also be using Paragraph Decoration with a paragraph text style:

 

Title Decoration.afpub

Thanks for this, I was unaware of text decorations. This works perfectly, I just wish there was an option for rounded corners. Regardless, this seems to be the best solution so far. Thanks!

[Fixx]

8 hours ago, tcwiggins03 said:

In APu I couldn't find any way to set padding via the Text Frame panel. I did try using Left and Right Indents as well as Space Before Paragraph set to Always, but these did not seem to make the text box resize at all.

You use Inset values to add padding. It does not change the size of text box but pushes text inner (thus "inset").

Paragraph Decoration is workable solution also, it all depends if you have text as longer run (as is usually preferable in normal publications), or if it is cut to snippets (as in posters and such single page layouts).