headline span column?

[cgidesign]

Trying to work with publisher 2.0.4 on Windows:

So far I did text stuff in a text editor (which works well for standard stuff).

Now I need text columns and spaning headlines.

I found threads with the same request from around 4 years ago. But without a solution.

Is this possible today in version 2.0.4?

[Old Bruce]

There is no way to do this easily. Your "Making a new text frame..." is currently the only way to do so.

[cgidesign]

Ok, does somebody know another low cost publishing software that has this feature (not from Adobe)?

Really, anything else I normally need, is already in my standard text sofware. I need a publishing solution only because of this, well, desktop publishing feature.

[thomaso]

12 hours ago, cgidesign said:

Only way I found: Making a new text frame

Without a separate text frame there is a related feature in the Character Panel: The option "No break". Although it is far from being suitable for general use ...

… it might be interesting for specific situations:

[Catshill]

I can recommend using frame rather than column based documents for layouts. Accordingly the span column issue isn’t something I worry about. 

[firstdefence]

Been asked for for quite a while now: 

 

[cgidesign]

Thanks all.

I searched some other packages but with no luck.

According to your answers there seems to be a way to do it in Publisher but I do not fully understand it yet.

I made mockup in Desinger to show what I like to achieve. I would be grateful if somebody could give a hint how to solve this in Publisher.

[MickRose]

Pinning (float) is worth playing around with as a workaround for Span Columns.

[thomaso]

3 hours ago, cgidesign said:

I made mockup

The desired text flow is unclear. In this layout I would read / expect a set of two separate two-column frames, each with the headline set to „No break“ with the right column belonging accordingly to the two headlines, not to the second only.

This way of text flow can't be done with just 1 text frame (regardless of a headline spanning) but would be possible as a long story to flow (e.g. across several pages) with two two-column frames (each starting with 1 headline) and then linked for text flow between frames.

[cgidesign]

Thanks for taking the time to help.

The textflow you drew there is how I like to have it.

If I understand you right, this is not possible if I also want the automatic flow?

So the conclusion is, this document has to be done manually, right?:

• Each content block needs its own frame
• Each headline needs its own frame and must be pinned manually
• If I delete or add text lines in a frame I would need to adjust all the subsequent frames by hand

Hm, this is more or less the same like in a text editor. Pity, I had hope a dtp software would offer some clever solution for this.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, cgidesign said:

If I understand you right, this is not possible if I also want the automatic flow?

So the conclusion is, this document has to be done manually, right?:

• Each content block needs its own frame
• Each headline needs its own frame and must be pinned manually
• If I delete or add text lines in a frame I would need to adjust all the subsequent frames by hand

As mentioned, you can have automatic flow (without pinning) – but you can not achieve the result with just 1 frame.

EDIT: the recipe below fails for two reasons. See next post.

The conclusion is in my view:

• Create the text style for the Headlines with "No break".
• This allows to keep headline + body in 1 frame (no pinning of a separate headline frame)
• The text auto-flows between columns (from left to right column)
• Additionally to the column-flow you can link the text frames with the usual text frame flow and thus create a chain of linked frames across all pages of the entire document.

Fazit: all text can be in 1 long story but in 2 text frames on each page (with the shown sample layout)

Edited March 17, 2023 by thomaso

[thomaso]

EDIT: Just noticed: My workflow as just posted above fails in 2 ways:

• APub appears not to apply a "Space Before" at the top of each column if set to "Always":

• "No break" will exceed the text frame with longer headlines:

So, the workflow with pinning the headlines in separate frames may be the better choice: it may require more frames and maybe more steps all together for an entire book but works more reliable.

Nevertheless, you still can sue the text frame flow between frames by linking them in the wanted order.

[thomaso]

A different approach with less frames (= without Pinning) would use

• "No break" for the Headline and
• a frame based Baseline Grid,

which gets deactivated for the Headline style and gets its starting point set to achieve the "Space Before/After" for the distance to the headline.

Nevertheless, I would not recommend this workflow for an entire book although it might work, because …

• its disadvantage of "No break" (frame exceeding long headlines)
• it requires more work & complexity for body with several paragraphs when space after is wanted,
• it may require more work to setup the baseline grid and
• is more sensible AND far less flexible in case of a change of font size or leading,
• also limited by the frame object property of the Baseline grid which can't get adjusted like a text style across several pages.

[cgidesign]

Appreciate your input @thomaso

I did more searching for a simple solution and in the end found out that LibreOffice (open source) can do what I need by simply using sections. I just need to set the page layout to single column and create sections as two columns. The headlines are paras in the page and the body text is in the sections. As a result I can edit like I have a normal text document. The font rendering though is not as pretty as in Publisher (and placing images is cumbersome like in most word processing software), but the headline thing is really more easy to achieve. As this is a small non commercial project of mine (little help document for hobby 3d people), saving time is one goal.

(even though I maybe convert it in the end to publisher just because the font rendering looks better - I don't like the huge spaces word tools normally create, and love that I can set letter and word spacing in Publisher which I can't in LibreOffice).

Again, thanks for your help.

[cgidesign]

Final Update about this topic:

Even though LibreOffice has a working span column function, the image placement unfortunately has a bug (the paragraph anchor jumps around on its own when changing the image position - so, no way to consistently tell an image to follow a specific paragraph).

Final solution: I installed my 12 year old CS6 Indesign (yes, it runs on Win 10) which I never used before and learned, all I need is possible in that software. Disadvantage: its UI has issues with todays HighDPI displays but it is usable.

Would it make sense to open a new feature request for Publisher V2? The one linked in this thread is already over 4 years old, now archived and maybe not in focus of Serif anymore?

[Dan C]

On 3/21/2023 at 10:51 AM, cgidesign said:

Would it make sense to open a new feature request for Publisher V2? The one linked in this thread is already over 4 years old, now archived and maybe not in focus of Serif anymore?

This sounds like a good idea in order to bring this to our teams attention once again, I would also recommend including a link within the new request to the archived request, to keep them linked