Need advice on fixing mirrored page baselines, working with auto flowed content, matching pages

[jamesgangcreative]

I discovered in this current book I'm working on that when I did a test print out, the text at the top of the pages was just a little too close to the line I have separating the header and the body. So, I tweaked "baseline" in the body text style (about -10pt) and it worked beautifully. (See sample "base shift correction.")

However, I have discovered two different issues I'd like to figure out how to correct if possible. 
At the bottom of pages, I will have either way too much content (and sometimes it appears there would be enough space for the next paragraph to continue), to not enough. 

("Flow goes all the way to the line")
("One good page one not")

I already went through a nightmare of what I thought would be a "just simply" thing, copying, cutting and pasting, a paragraph that accidentally was removed and placed in another part of the book. ... It took me about an 90 minutes of attempting to copy, cut and paste, cut and such, and discovered I was able to drag the link file that was now in the wrong place, and put it back in the right place. I then was able to breathe again. 

I'm sure there are some tricks and tips that people who have taken classes in using the AF know ... I'm having to learn on the fly and I have to see I've impressed myself in getting the hang of it fairly quick. 

But, now I have another mystery: without screwing up the entire book and having to start over - again -  is there a way to fix this issue like I did with the baseline maneuver? Of course, I can possibly move text up or down a hair, but what about the pages where the content is smacking up against the page number? And I am trying to be proactive in finding out the tip prior to going down a rabbit hole of having to recreate the text box flow by adding .175" at the bottom. Plus, is "Paste without format" a clue when it comes to cutting and pasting linked flowed content? Once it's flowed into the document, can I turn the linking off and then cut and paste if necessary? 

Mind you, here are some examples. And remember, every page is set up exactly the same. The sample I have called "Bottom perfect" I did nothing to. The others, I did nothing to. The content is all the same style Bodytext. I'm a logic kinda guy so this stumps me. 

 

[walt.farrell]

Very often, when you have situations where there is too much space at the bottom, it seems to come down to side-effects related to the Flow options in the Paragraph panel settings or the Paragraph Text Style Flow settings. Particularly with the ones I've circled below:

As for getting too close the the page numbers, that's largely the size you make the text frame, where you position it, and how low in it your baseline grid goes.

 

[jamesgangcreative]

3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Very often, when you have situations where there is too much space at the bottom, it seems to come down to side-effects related to the Flow options in the Paragraph panel settings or the Paragraph Text Style Flow settings. Particularly with the ones I've circled below:

As for getting too close the the page numbers, that's largely the size you make the text frame, where you position it, and how low in it your baseline grid goes.

 

But why would some pages be fine, and other wouldn't be? As I say, all those pages were set to flow with one style. And I tried turning all these on and off, one by one. However, I didn't do all the mathematical considerations. I gave up and decided to take an hour to grab the text box and pull up one line and then drag horizontally. Just wasn't worth spending hours on. Do hope there's an answer as this book is "only" 180 pgs. After setting all the masters, etc, I'd hate to have to do this on 300 pages to add .1" to the bottom. 

I assume "getting too close is largely..." so is there an easy way to fix this? That's the rub. 

"How low in your baseline grid goes' assumes I know what you're talking about regarding baseline setup. I am working 100% on defaults, so whatever that default is "No change," etc etc., then that's the baseline setup.  All I did was choose a text box and margins. Then I see I need to add .1". How? Any way to do this? 

 

 

[walt.farrell]

27 minutes ago, jamesgangcreative said:

But why would some pages be fine, and other wouldn't be?

Because the spacing is then dependent on the number of lines either (a) remaining in a paragraph as you come close to the bottom of the frame and/or (b) in the next paragraph as you near the bottom of the frame.

33 minutes ago, jamesgangcreative said:

As I say, all those pages were set to flow with one style. And I tried turning all these on and off, one by one. However, I didn't do all the mathematical considerations.

If you have any of them on or set to other than 0 I would suggest turning them all off and setting the last one to 0. There may be some pages with more space at the bottom (above the numbers) than others. I don't know that having them all off will make it perfect, but having those options set on often seems, to me, to make thngs worse.

28 minutes ago, jamesgangcreative said:

I assume "getting too close is largely..." so is there an easy way to fix this? That's the rub. 

Drag the bottom edge of the text frame up until the full baseline of the baseline grid is far enough above the page numbers for your tastes. Or (if you're not actually using the Baseline Grid) until the bottom of the frame is high enough above the numbers.

35 minutes ago, jamesgangcreative said:

Do hope there's an answer as this book is "only" 180 pgs. After setting all the masters, etc, I'd hate to have to do this on 300 pages to add .1" to the bottom. 

I hope your text frames are on one of those Masters, so all you have to do is adjust the bottom of the frame on the Master, and then all those pages adjust automatically.

 

30 minutes ago, jamesgangcreative said:

"How low in your baseline grid goes' assumes I know what you're talking about regarding baseline setup. I am working 100% on defaults, so whatever that default is "No change," etc etc., then that's the baseline setup.

Perhaps you aren't using Baseline Grid at all? Unless you have activated it it is not in use, as far as I know.. You would activate it either in the Baseline Grid Manager or in the Text Frame panel, which has its own set of Baseline controls for each text frame, or via the Use Baseline setting in the Paragraph panel or in your Paragraph Text Style. When enabled, you can show the Baseline Grid using View > Show Baseline Grid.

It's a complex subject, and difficult to diagnose just based on screenshots. If you had a sample document, some subset of your current one that illustrates one or two of the issues, and would upload it here as a .afpub file, it might be easier to work from that.

[jamesgangcreative]

13 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Because the spacing is then dependent on the number of lines either (a) remaining in a paragraph as you come close to the bottom of the frame and/or (b) in the next paragraph as you near the bottom of the frame.

If you have any of them on or set to other than 0 I would suggest turning them all off and setting the last one to 0. There may be some pages with more space at the bottom (above the numbers) than others. I don't know that having them all off will make it perfect, but having those options set on often seems, to me, to make thngs worse.

There is nothing set as anything other than 0 unless a default for something is not set at 0. Of course, I have no idea why the font turned grey instead of 100% black either. 🙂

Drag the bottom edge of the text frame up until the full baseline of the baseline grid is far enough above the page numbers for your tastes. Or (if you're not actually using the Baseline Grid) until the bottom of the frame is high enough above the numbers.

I hope your text frames are on one of those Masters, so all you have to do is adjust the bottom of the frame on the Master, and then all those pages adjust automatically.

Supposedly, but when I adjust the bottom of the frame on the Master, the pages adjust but the text doesn't come with it. I ended up dragging the text on about 100 out of 160 pages up and snapping. Gave up looking or trying to find something to save time 🙂

I created masters and I have text frames in the masters. Then I flowed my text into the one page that was created and all when well, initially. Looked great. But any tweaks or changes to the text box on the master just shows as now a new box behind the text. 

Perhaps you aren't using Baseline Grid at all? Unless you have activated it it is not in use, as far as I know.. You would activate it either in the Baseline Grid Manager or in the Text Frame panel, which has its own set of Baseline controls for each text frame, or via the Use Baseline setting in the Paragraph panel or in your Paragraph Text Style. When enabled, you can show the Baseline Grid using View > Show Baseline Grid.

I tried to go backwards and activate and that was a nightmare. Cleared that. The only baseline change I made was in the actual body text style. That fixed the top of the pages beautifully. 

It's a complex subject, and difficult to diagnose just based on screenshots. If you had a sample document, some subset of your current one that illustrates one or two of the issues, and would upload it here as a .afpub file, it might be easier to work from that.

The screenshots show what the tops and bottoms of the pages are doing automatically without changes in baseline, turning on baseline, resetting anything from 0. That is the automatic flow from one page to the next with all defaults set. 

Thank you but I got the pages looking decent by manually moving text boxes after changing the text box on the master. I was able to then snap to the new text box and am done for now. I'll make a copy and play around with this at another time. Thanks for your assistance. 

 

[walt.farrell]

17 minutes ago, jamesgangcreative said:

I created masters and I have text frames in the masters. Then I flowed my text into the one page that was created and all when well, initially. Looked great. But any tweaks or changes to the text box on the master just shows as now a new box behind the text. 

That sounds like you have done something additional on the document pages, or reapplied the Masters, as otherwise the adjusted text frames would have immediate effect on the document pages and the text flow there.

But without knowing more details of what you did on the document pages, it's impossible to say. However, before your next major project, I would suggest experimenting with a small (2-5 page) sample file, and keeping note of the exact actions you perform. That way, if they do not work well you can tell us what actions resulted in that behavior, and we can advise whether it seems a program issue or something you should have done differently.

At this point, with your existing document, it's probably impossible to know exactly what was done. Sorry.

[Old Bruce]

18 hours ago, jamesgangcreative said:

So, I tweaked "baseline" in the body text style (about -10pt) and it worked beautifully. (See sample "base shift correction.")

This confuses me no end. In the text style panel I see only an on/off/inherit checkbox, no way to adjust/tweak anything by negative 10 points. I have never heard of "base shift correction".

Most of your problems could be dealt with by moving text frames on the Master Page. You really should be using Master Pages for something like this.

[jamesgangcreative]

28 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

That sounds like you have done something additional on the document pages, or reapplied the Masters, as otherwise the adjusted text frames would have immediate effect on the document pages and the text flow there.

But without knowing more details of what you did on the document pages, it's impossible to say. However, before your next major project, I would suggest experimenting with a small (2-5 page) sample file, and keeping note of the exact actions you perform. That way, if they do not work well you can tell us what actions resulted in that behavior, and we can advise whether it seems a program issue or something you should have done differently.

At this point, with your existing document, it's probably impossible to know exactly what was done. Sorry.

Good plan.

I have three masters: Master A is just the margins, blank, no headers or footers

Master B adds the header and page numbers

Master C is similar to Master A, except that the odd page has a decoration for the Chapters. 

Question: Now, before I do anything regarding flowing a word.docx into this document, do I place a text box on the left side within the margins of the master spread and a text book on the right side within the margins of the master spread? Then, I go to the first Page and place my flow word doc into that. Then Shift click to automatically flow the document? 

Because the step I left out was creating text boxes within the margins of the masters. 
What I did was create the masters, then chose Page one, flowed the document into that. Then, I assign the masters according to need. I did not put a "dummy" text box in the master. Is this where I'm going wrong? 

G

 

[Old Bruce]

1 minute ago, jamesgangcreative said:

I did not put a "dummy" text box in the master. Is this where I'm going wrong? 

Yes.

[jamesgangcreative]

10 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

This confuses me no end. In the text style panel I see only an on/off/inherit checkbox, no way to adjust/tweak anything by negative 10 points. I have never heard of "base shift correction".

Most of your problems could be dealt with by moving text frames on the Master Page. You really should be using Master Pages for something like this.

I just answered Walt above with this. I did use masters. But it seems there may be a step I'm missing with the masters. Take a look at the response I sent him. There were three master pages, all same margins, just different uses. 

[jamesgangcreative]

1 minute ago, Old Bruce said:

Yes.

Great I'll give it a go. It won't take anything to flow the manuscript into a new document just to see if I can then move the text box within the master. Thanks. 

[jamesgangcreative]

1 hour ago, jamesgangcreative said:

Great I'll give it a go. It won't take anything to flow the manuscript into a new document just to see if I can then move the text box within the master. Thanks. 

 

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

Yes.

Here's my test. What am I doing incorrectly? There is no "just simply" reflow of the text into the new text box. I'd have to adjust each page manually as I have done in the past. PS That's a typo on Step 5. Should say "I can see the new text box, not book." And Step 2 was just to show that the placement works and when I shift-click the ms flows. 

 

Edited March 11, 2022 by jamesgangcreative
mentioned a typo

[walt.farrell]

See that red eye icon? If you Shift+Click it a new page will be created for you.

[jamesgangcreative]

32 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

See that red eye icon? If you Shift+Click it a new page will be created for you.

Yes, that is correct. That is Step 2. Look at the additional samples. The pages I'm sharing are pages 50, 51.  At issue isn't the flow.  I'm sharing that I followed your direction and changed the text box size on the master so the text box automatically changes AFTER I've done the flow of the document. You had said in a previous post that to change the flow simply, would be to adjust the text box in the master. When I do that, you will see on the Step5, that the page flow doesn't change. I see the new Text box indicated in blue behind the content, but the content didn't move when I changed the text box in the master, Step 4. I am asking what is the method to get text to reflow into a changed text box? If I change the size of the text box in a master, and I apply that master to pages, then how do I get the text that has already been placed to now automatically go into the new text box if I change its size on the master. I don't want to delete the content and then reflow it. It seems the only way to do these changes is to do them manually one at a time on 1000 pgs or to delete the placed document, change the text box and reflow the document. Unless there's a secret step (paste inside, paste without format, etc etc) I am missing. 

[walt.farrell]

7 minutes ago, jamesgangcreative said:

When I do that, you will see on the Step5, that the page flow doesn't change.

Please enable View > Show Text Flow, and see what shows up for your text frame links. I suspect you do not have some of those frames linked together.

[jamesgangcreative]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

This confuses me no end. In the text style panel I see only an on/off/inherit checkbox, no way to adjust/tweak anything by negative 10 points. I have never heard of "base shift correction".

Most of your problems could be dealt with by moving text frames on the Master Page. You really should be using Master Pages for something like this.

How do I reset "factory default" so everything is reset? I ran factory default reset and snapping is still on, my View on the sidebar is all screwed up from my trying to hide glyphs and check text styles, and such. How do I get the sidebar back as it was, and reset everything so text is 100% black, pages are set to default sizes, and such. 

[jamesgangcreative]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Please enable View > Show Text Flow, and see what shows up for your text frame links. I suspect you do not have some of those frames linked together.

Every frame and every page flows. That's how I work on the document. That is never off. 
You mean this?  And if there was a text frame that wasn't linked, I haven't a clue as to how to fix that. I ran into an issue where a chapter repeated, I attempted a cut and paste of one page, that sent the link flying to five pages behind, and duplicating the chapter (the red dot). That's when I gave up and started the second time. 

 

 

[walt.farrell]

43 minutes ago, jamesgangcreative said:

And if there was a text frame that wasn't linked, I haven't a clue as to how to fix that.

You click on the lower-left linking triangle of the source frame and then in the target frame.

https://affinity.help/publisher/en-US.lproj/pages/Text/linkingTextFrames.html

45 minutes ago, jamesgangcreative said:

Every frame and every page flows. That's how I work on the document. That is never off. 

In your screenshots above (in the post where I referred to the red eye) you appear not to have Show Text Flow on, as the links were not shown.

Really, it would be better if you would prepare a small document, just a few pages, and see if you find any problems, with the kinowledge you've gained here. If you find any, you can share that .afpub document with us and we can tell you what's going on.

[jamesgangcreative]

39 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

You click on the lower-left linking triangle of the source frame and then in the target frame.

https://affinity.help/publisher/en-US.lproj/pages/Text/linkingTextFrames.html

In your screenshots above (in the post where I referred to the red eye) you appear not to have Show Text Flow on, as the links were not shown.

Really, it would be better if you would prepare a small document, just a few pages, and see if you find any problems, with the kinowledge you've gained here. If you find any, you can share that .afpub document with us and we can tell you what's going on.

I flowed the entire ms I'd been working on. Those pages I shared with the Steps were the new document following what I have learned here. Whether it's 2 pages or 30 it's not going to matter if it doesn't work for me. If those are the correct steps, I don't know what else to do. In Step 2 I just wanted to show you that the triangles show up. Did the latest images I shared, show the text flow as you required? View Text Flow...  All the pages flow, but there are no red triangles on any pages after the flow. I don't work in PREVIEW mode, I work in the View Text flow mode. So, I can cut and paste ten pages from the 160 page document and put them in as I just did with the 160 pg document if you think that is going to suddenly make a difference. I don't think so. Guess I'm at a dead end. I'll continue playing around with putting a text box in the master pages, and trying to change the size of the text box and see if the text reflows into the change while watching more videos and reading instruction pieces.

 

PS I did this (see screen capture) on about 100 of the 160 pages,  but I'm trying to understand how to do this automatically. There may be something in here about setting up new text frames that may help. I assumed simply grabbing and resizing a text frame in a master would reflow the content, but apparently that isn't the trick.  PPS You mean bottom right, right? 🙂:

When a text frame is selected, the frame includes a triangular Text Flow button at the bottom right of the text frame (red or blue). Irrespective of whether the frame text is overflowing, you can click this to draw out another text frame linked to the originating text frame.

  To link the selected frame to an existing unlinked frame:

Thanks

[walt.farrell]

28 minutes ago, jamesgangcreative said:

PS I did this (see screen capture) on about 100 of the 160 pages,  but I'm trying to understand how to do this automatically. There may be something in here about setting up new text frames that may help. I assumed simply grabbing and resizing a text frame in a master would reflow the content, but apparently that isn't the trick.  PPS You mean bottom right, right?

If I understand your reference, I was referring to linking, not resizing. And to the linking triangle.

In any case, you do not want to use the handle you pointed to (the detached one) to resize a text frame. Only use handles attached directly to the frame (the one you have circled, for example).

30 minutes ago, jamesgangcreative said:

I flowed the entire ms I'd been working on. Those pages I shared with the Steps were the new document following what I have learned here. Whether it's 2 pages or 30 it's not going to matter if it doesn't work for me. If those are the correct steps, I don't know what else to do.

My suggestion is you work on a sample document, possibly with dummy text, a few pages long. Or some subset of your document you're willing to share.

Prepare it using what you now know. Then, if you experience any of the problems you've described while setting up that document, share it with us by attaching the .afpub here. Things are too complex to try to explain using only screenshots, in my opinion, as there is too much information involved.

As you prepare the document, take careful notes of what you did, and what happened that you did not expect, and share those, too.

[jamesgangcreative]

I'll create a ten page spread when I have a chance. 

Hopefully all the masters and such will be set up in default. It seems "reset to factory default" doesn't mean everything. 

Maybe I'll just try choose a template I've never used before and work from there for this test. 

[Old Bruce]

18 hours ago, jamesgangcreative said:

I'll create a ten page spread when I have a chance. 

Part of the problem here is due to nomenclature. In Publisher there are one and two page spreads. A spread is the pages joined together. Here is a five page document which is made up of three spreads, one one page and two two page spreads.

You may be thinking of a ten page publication or document.

[jamesgangcreative]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

Part of the problem here is due to nomenclature. In Publisher there are one and two page spreads. A spread is the pages joined together. Here is a five page document which is made up of three spreads, one one page and two two page spreads.

You may be thinking of a ten page publication or document.

Thank you, I'm just writing fast, yes, divided into spreads. I know the difference. As this isn't something that apparently is easily fixed, as I say, I fixed it manually for now and I am going to spend some time trying to figure it out rather than go back and forth with the same information and the same result. Regardless of pages, spreads, counts. It didn't work with 200 pages, or 100 spreads and one front matter page and a blank page at the end, and 10 sections. So, until I discover the secret passageway it isn't going to matter. 🙂

[Old Bruce]

On 3/10/2022 at 1:14 PM, jamesgangcreative said:

I discovered in this current book I'm working on that when I did a test print out, the text at the top of the pages was just a little too close to the line I have separating the header and the body. So, I tweaked "baseline" in the body text style (about -10pt) and it worked beautifully. (See sample "base shift correction.")

 

Is this text being too close to something the problem? Or is the problem with text not consistently lining up at the top and bottom of your text frames? Are you wanting to have text even at the top of the page and even at the bottom and have the same number of lines on each page?

[jamesgangcreative]

27 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Is this text being too close to something the problem? Or is the problem with text not consistently lining up at the top and bottom of your text frames? Are you wanting to have text even at the top of the page and even at the bottom and have the same number of lines on each page?

Both. And this is after the text has already flowed into the document. And when I print out and decide it would be better if there was an additional .01" space at the bottom or top.

So, yes, if there was a way to get the top and bottom and same number of lines on each page, in set up, prior to doing anything that would be great. In this case, however, what I asking is if there is a way to  "just simply" automatically move all 200 pages just a tad higher on the page vs. having to click on the little blue circle on individually pages and move the content up, then move it over to the right margin. As we know, in word.docx, for example, you would "just simply" adjust the margin taking about 45seconds. Yes, different program. Yes, not comparing. Using as an example. I've actually built books using Word and it is a nightmare beyond belief. AF is much much better and very easy to get the hang of, except for the finer adjustments. I still don't have a clue as to what all those instructions are for under the edits for styles for example. Apply to paragraphs, don't apply, but keep local formatting, or not but do ... omg. 🙂 God forbid you accidentally touch one of those little buggers. 

 

Speaking of which, any idea as to why - after I did an edit of the body text - the size of the listing became 3 pt? The body text is 12/16. I probably accidentally hit local format edit character strawberry preserves. 🙂