Running headers

[Ash]

Apps: Affinity Publisher
Platforms: Windows, macOS and iPad

Running Headers are field which refers to text of a particular style elsewhere in the document. The most obvious cases are of a novel where the title of the chapter is repeated at the top of each page or of a dictionary where the first and last word defined on a given page are denoted in the header.

A Running Header is treated much the same as other fields such as creation date or current section and is found under Document Sections on the Fields Panel. The … button allows you to configure the header, whilst double-clicking the field’s name inserts a header with the current settings into the text. Once placed, the field’s settings can be edited from the right-click context menu’s Edit Field... option.

The Running Header’s settings allow you to choose which text will be chosen for the instance and how it will be presented. You can identify the paragraph or character style which should be tracked and whether you are interested in the “first on page” (which will show the first text of the tracked style on the current page or the previous text of the tracked style looking backwards through the document if none is present on the current page) or “last on page” which will show the last text of the tracked style on the current page or nothing if there is none on the current page.

N.B. Frames containing running headers are not considered as sources for tracked styles. This is because, in the case of using “last on page” it is entirely possible a running header would, when evaluated, push the source text off of the page and thus render itself invalid. Running headers are therefore intended to be placed in separate frames - usually as page headers.

The settings for constraining the running headers are much the same as for Cross-References. You can limit the number of words or stop on a specific character, include or exclude paragraph numbering and so on. Additionally, you can also apply case adjustments, None to leave the text as you found it, or Sentence, Title, Upper or Lower to reformat the text in the same manner as if you applied the text case commands to the original text.

N.B. At present, composition of fields doesn’t allow them to flow onto multiple lines. A running header which exceeds the length of a line of text will truncate to fit the frame.

[Pedrober]

This feature was not present in Serif PagePlus! Congratulations.

[Seneca]

5 hours ago, Ash said:

Running Headers are field which refers to text of a particular style elsewhere in the document.

This is a fantastic addition. Thank you.

A couple of suggestions:

1. Ellipses are great to visually show that the heading has been truncated. But it would be great to be able to control spacing before the ellipses. At the moment there seems to be no way of including a space just before the ellipses. This can be helpful for a style house that dictates that.

2. It's great that we are able to control the length of the running header by the number of words but sometimes this can be awkward. Would it be possible to truncate the header according to the length of the running header text box and adding the ellipses just after the word that fits into one line. That would serve as another option in addition to the number of words per line.

[A_B_C]

Again, a fantastic improvement. The team is definitely on fire at the moment. 😀

[Petar Petrenko]

Great! It was a long-waited feature.

Just a suggestion. For me, it is very hard to find, which also leads to slowing the workflow. Wasn't it more logical to be located where the other fields are -- under "Text > Insert > Fields"?

[debraspicher]

1 hour ago, A_B_C said:

Again, a fantastic improvement. The team is definitely on fire at the moment. 😀

Yes, I'd say they've found their stride

[AllanP]

This 2.1 Beta to the Affinity Suite looks very impressive.

I'm particularly interested in this "Running Headers" feature, but I can't quite get my head around how it all hangs together... anyone got a walk-thru example of how to utilise it please?

[PaoloT]

Very beautiful new features. Development is going fast, and in a direction I really like!

Paolo

 

[MikeTO]

Thanks, this feature works great. I tried it with the running header on the master and source text on the page and vice versa. I wasn't able to make it fail.

6 hours ago, AllanP said:

I'm particularly interested in this "Running Headers" feature, but I can't quite get my head around how it all hangs together... anyone got a walk-thru example of how to utilise it please?

As Ash wrote, a running header is commonly used to show a chapter/section name at the top or bottom of each page, or the title of a paragraph (like in a dictionary). You can accomplish the former with the Section Manager but that won't work if all the text in your document is in a single story - sections are fixed to specific pages and you might add or delete text which may cause your sections to need to start on a different page. So inserting the section name field won't always work. Enter running headers.

1. Format your section or chapter names with Heading 1 or another suitable style
2. Add a short text frame at the top or bottom of your master pages for the section or chapter name. Place the cursor in this frame.
3. Using Window > Fields > Document Sections > Running Header, click the ... button beside Running Header to set the default value for all future running header fields you will insert. This won't change ones you might have already inserted so do this first.
4. Choose the style your section or chapter names are formatted with. i.e., Heading 1
5. Unless you're formatting a dictionary type document, leave "Use" as First on Page
6. Select Include Paragraph Numbering if your chapter headings have automatic paragraph numbers you want to include in the running header
7. Ignore the limits for now, that's for truncating long headings. Close the popup.
8. Double click the word Running Header in Fields and Publisher will insert the Running Header field into the text frame you drew.
9. If it's a facing pages document, do the same on the other side of the master.
10. Go to pages based on this master and you'll now see running headers on those pages. They will show the first instance of Heading 1 on the page. If Heading 1 isn't used on that page they'll show the previous use in the story, even if it's 10-15 pages earlier.

Cheers

[MikeTO]

4 minutes ago, anto said:

@MikeTO could you attach test file or video how it works?

Sure. This is the simplest of test files but it shows the concept for repeating a chapter name on pages.

Running.afpub

[AllanP]

7 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Thanks, this feature works great. I tried it with the running header on the master and source text on the page and vice versa. I wasn't able to make it fail.

As Ash wrote, a running header is commonly used to show a chapter/section name at the top or bottom of each page, or the title of a paragraph (like in a dictionary). You can accomplish the former with the Section Manager but that won't work if all the text in your document is in a single story - sections are fixed to specific pages and you might add or delete text which may cause your sections to need to start on a different page. So inserting the section name field won't always work. Enter running headers.

.....

@MikeTO Great! Many thanks for your explanation and the sample file. That's really helpful. I was having problems visualising how the feature operated.I was probably getting confused with Section Names (which I've been using recently in a project). This looks to be a useful feature for particular use cases. In the project I'm working on, each article is its own section do the section name field does the job for placing headers on all pages. However,  id I was working on a project where I wanted the headers to reflect "chapter name" or similar within a section, then running heads would be very useful.

It was a bit overwhelming seeing all the additional features in this update to the Beta! One wonders how many more features are going to be added before 2.1 is officially released. I don't think anyone can complain about Serif's approach to development of the Affinity suite coupled with its Universal Licensing policy. Congrats to Ash and the Serif Team for continuing to delkiver excellent products.

 

[Seneca]

In my earlier post I commented that Running Header is a great addition to Publisher. With this in mind I decided to take this feature for a spin and try to create scripture references as it is often found at the top of a bible pages. This is pushing this feature to as far as it can go at the moment.

The reference below is composed of the following bits:

1. The book name (Running Header field)

2. Chapter number (First on Page)  (Running Header field)

3. Colon

4. Verse Number (First on Page)  (Running Header field)

5. En hyphen

6. Chapter number (Last on Page)  (Running Header field)

7. Colon

8. Verse number (Last on Page)  (Running Header field)

This works well but I quickly discovered that for this to work correctly  we need another addition to the “Use” option. Currently we have “First on Page” and “Last on Page”. This works well for the majority of cases but here we need something like “From Previous unless First on Page”. I struggle to come up with a better wording for this.

The reason this is needed is shown in the screenshot below. There is no way at the moment to account for the fact that the chapter number can still be on previous page and this still needs to be carried to the current page.

I also discovered that the drop caps feature as we have now is not adequate to make chapter numbers to be dropcaps. There might be workarounds but they will remain workarounds.

There may be other ways to accomplish this that I am not aware of so am looking forward to your comments and suggestions.

I'm including the file I was experimenting with below:

Bible-refs-2.afpub

Bible-refs-2.afpub

[MikeTO]

3 hours ago, Seneca said:

This works well but I quickly discovered that for this to work correctly  we need another addition to the “Use” option. Currently we have “First on Page” and “Last on Page”. This works well for the majority of cases but here we need something like “From Previous unless First on Page”. I struggle to come up with a better wording for this.

The reason this is needed is shown in the screenshot below. There is no way at the moment to account for the fact that the chapter number can still be on previous page and this still needs to be carried to the current page.

I think you're right. I believe ID has the same running header feature set so it has the same limitation but it would be nice if Publisher could address this situation. First on Page uses the first instance of the style on the page and the previous instance if it isn't on the page. What you want is "Continued", where it always uses the previous instance unless the page starts with the style.

Also note, Quark offers "First on Spread" and "Last on Spread" which might be useful to some people.

Drop caps: I think you should split that off into a separate thread.

Cheers

[MikeTO]

There's an instant crash bug with Running Headers - start Publisher and click its ... button without first creating a document.

Affinity Publisher 2 Beta-2023-03-17-112010.ips

[Seneca]

On 3/16/2023 at 11:49 AM, Ash said:

Running Headers are field which refers to text of a particular style elsewhere in the document.

Just noticed that if you include Footnotes to the document, they will be taken into account by the Running headers field.

I think only the text in the main frame should be taken into account by the Running Header field. Footnotes (and possibly other things) should only be taken into account as an option. 

Please see the screenshot below:

[MikeTO]

2 minutes ago, Seneca said:

Just noticed that if you include Footnotes to the document, they will be taken into account by the Running headers field.

I think only the text in the main frame should be taken into account by the Running Header field. Footnotes (and possibly other things) should only be taken into account as an option.

While I agree that there's no need for footnote text to be in a running header, you'd have to actually choose the style of the footnote for this to happen. You're not sharing a style between footnotes and headings, are you?

[Seneca]

5 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

You're not sharing a style between footnotes and headings, are you?

No. The footnotes are not styled (neither the Paragraph Style nor Character Style are applied).

[MikeTO]

22 minutes ago, Seneca said:

No. The footnotes are not styled (neither the Paragraph Style nor Character Style are applied).

Oh, I guess if you're using no style in running headers then this would be a problem. I recommend choosing a style for running headers to pick up and you won't have this issue.

[Seneca]

40 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

Oh, I guess if you're using no style in running headers then this would be a problem. I recommend choosing a style for running headers to pick up and you won't have this issue.

What I should have said earlier in my post is that it doesn't matter whether the style is there or not.

[MikeTO]

2 hours ago, Seneca said:

What I should have said earlier in my post is that it doesn't matter whether the style is there or not.

I'm not seeing that issue. Could you share a test document?

Here's a test document that shows the footnote being ignored. The footnote has no style applied to it as you said you didn't have any applied to yours. The running header is set to take the text from Heading 1.

running footnote.afpub

[Seneca]

3 hours ago, MikeTO said:

I'm not seeing that issue.

@MikeTO ,

I went though my settings again and discovered that I did have the same Character Style applied to one of the footnotes.

I fell into the trap of not seeing the obvious. Need to take a break.

EDIT: You were right about the styles

[Petar Petrenko]

13 hours ago, MikeTO said:

I recommend choosing a style for running headers to pick up and you won't have this issue.

Using styles must be optional, not obligatory. InDesign and Quark don't ask you to use styles.

[Seneca]

11 hours ago, NNN said:

Using styles must be optional, not obligatory.

I think you are referring to the Running Header Field itself. 

What we are referring to here the logic behind the field. The Running Header field is set up to display the information that needs to find on the page. It looks for that information in the Paragraph style or a Character style.

This works in the same way as in inDesign. My recollection of how it works in Quark is rusty at this stage.

[SueC]

I tried opening your file: running.afpub and got a warning that it was creating in a later version, and wouldn't open. But my version says it's 2.0.4 and the latest version. So I am mystified why I can't open it.

I don't have any "fields" menu under Window or under any other menu. I can see the "fields" panel but when I double click on anything nothing happens, the panel doesn't appear to be editable. Also there is no running header "button" or any label for running header that I can find. I follow the discussion above as it's precisely what I would do for running headers. But I cannot find anyway to do it. (see screen shot)

Does no documentation exist covering all the features and functions of the program? I've just bought the Affinity suite and now trying to figure it out, but I cannot find information. Running headers  based on styles seems pretty basic... 

[MikeTO]

14 minutes ago, SueC said:

I tried opening your file: running.afpub and got a warning that it was creating in a later version, and wouldn't open. But my version says it's 2.0.4 and the latest version. So I am mystified why I can't open it.

I don't have any "fields" menu under Window or under any other menu. I can see the "fields" panel but when I double click on anything nothing happens, the panel doesn't appear to be editable. Also there is no running header "button" or any label for running header that I can find. I follow the discussion above as it's precisely what I would do for running headers. But I cannot find anyway to do it. (see screen shot)

Does no documentation exist covering all the features and functions of the program? I've just bought the Affinity suite and now trying to figure it out, but I cannot find information. Running headers  based on styles seems pretty basic... 

Hi @SueC and welcome to the forums. This is the 2.1 beta forum so we're discussing a public beta version. The running headers feature is only present in 2.1 and this document will only open in 2.1. You're using 2.0.4 which is the current "retail" version. You're welcome to enrol in the beta program if you like. You can install 2.1 beta separate from 2.0.4, but keep in mind that 2.1 documents can't be opened in 2.0. Cheers.