Border styles (for example, thin-thick) for text frames.

[Compositor K]

From looking in the forums I know that, at least as of a couple of years ago, this sort of border style wasn't available. I'd like to find out whether this is still the case, or if I'm just missing something, perhaps something new in V2. I'm new to Affinity, and bringing work over from Adobe InDesign. 

One of the projects is a periodic table. It has 118 boxes, one for each chemical element. In InDesign, each text box (frame) had a thin-thick border assigned to the box. I'd very much like to keep that. 

But the workaround of superimposing separate frames with simple borders to make a compound border, and then grouping the frames with the text frame, would be very awkward with this many boxes, and would make the file much harder to work with.

Curiously, in the Text Frame panel in Publisher, the thin-thick border style of the original InDesign file is still displayed, even though the options are not available, as far as I can tell:

Thanks for your attention. This is my first post here, so please bear with any technical mistakes.

[Hangman]

Hi @Compositor K and welcome to the forums,

While there is currently no built-in option, you can replicate the thin-thick border using the appearance panel in Designer, via StudioLink (if you have access to it)... If you want the section between the thick and thin lines to appear transparent to reveal the background you can apply the Erase Blend Mode to the White Stroke.

[Compositor K]

Thanks Hangman. I just tried your suggestion, but I still can't get it to work: I can't seem to select the text frame in such a way as to get the stroke properties to apply to the frame--whatever I do to the stroke is applied to the type within the frame. (Note: in the original InDesign file, the stroke was applied to the text frame.)

In Publisher, I can click on the frame, and any changes I make to the width of the border will apply to the frame itself, not the type. (I just can't change the border style, my original problem.) It doesn't matter either whether I make the changes in the Appearance panel or the Stroke panel.
 

[Done]

.

[carl123]

@Compositor K

One way...  (Needs 2 affinity apps, I think?)

1. Create a PNG file with the thin-thick border you want
2. Create a brush from this PNG file

3. Create a Rectangle and in the Stroke settings select the brush as the stroke 
4. Select the Rectangle and Edit > Copy
5 Select/Create a Text Frame and Edit > Paste Style

The Frame Text panel now shows a (resizable) double line for the Stroke (see screenshot)

The original Rectangle in Step 3 is no longer needed and can be deleted as you can Copy & Paste-Style the thin-thick stroke from the text frame to any other text frame 

 

9 hours ago, Compositor K said:

One of the projects is a periodic table. It has 118 boxes, one for each chemical element.

Select > Same Object > Frame Text should allow you to Paste Style to multiple objects in one operation

 

[Done]

.

[thomaso]

10 hours ago, Compositor K said:

Curiously, in the Text Frame panel in Publisher, the thin-thick border style of the original InDesign file is still displayed, even though the options are not available,

Interesting. A related curiosity: A multi-stroke created within APub (AD persona) gets lost & turned to single stroke as soon the object is used as Text Frame:

[Compositor K]

@thomaso

Thanks--That is suggestive. It's looking as if applying a border to a text frame in Publisher, even insofar as it can be done, is of very limited use. See also the example below.

@carl123

I've had a go at trying your suggestion, using Affinity Photo (because I'm used to working with brushes in Photoshop). But I'm clearly going into have to learn a lot more about Photo, and about brushes in Photo. Photoshop habits seem to be not the slightest help here--even for creating a .png image with a simple 1-1-2 black-white-black pattern for the thin-thick border. Learning these things is already on my agenda, but not for today. I'll have to come back to it later.

In the meantime, there's a question of whether this is actually the solution. The border needs to be of a determined width (3 points).

I might indeed be able to get the desired 3-point border with the desired brush pattern, since I would set the width when first applying the border--as long as that border is not applied to the type, which is a possibility (see below). Even if it is applied to any type already in the box, I would have the option of cutting the type and pasting elsewhere, applying the border, and then pasting the type back and seeing what happens. That might well work.

On the other hand, for general use, this doesn't look like a full substitute for the ability to apply a border to a text frame in Publisher. For general use, you would need to be able to resize the border. My experience (and thomaso's post) suggests that, when a border is applied to a text frame in Publisher, any subsequent changes in border width (say, from a 3-point border to a 6-point border), will cause a border to be applied to the text within the frame as well, so that both the frame and the text will wind up with a 6-point border.

For example, here's a document in which (interestingly) the border was somehow imported intact from InDesign to Publisher:

In Publisher, when I change the width of the border, the type gets a border too, of the specified width:

Thanks for your suggestion! I'll be looking into it as a learning experience even if it's not the solution for this particular project.
 

 

[Done]

.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Compositor K said:

My experience (and thomaso's post) suggests that, when a border is applied to a text frame in Publisher, any subsequent changes in border width (say, from a 3-point border to a 6-point border), will cause a border to be applied to the text within the frame as well, so that both the frame and the text will wind up with a 6-point border.

This seems to be a misinterpretation of my post regarding the text outlines in APub: Note, in my screenshot, the text does not show an outline, only the frame. As @Return demonstrates, there are different locations in APub's interface to set a stroke for text and for frame while you can't set them together with just 1 setting.

[Hangman]

A possible alternative approach which can be achieved directly within Publisher and avoids the need for additional frames or brushes and is fully editable is to create a text frame by creating text styles using text-style decorations...

Thick Thin

 

Thin Thick Thin

[Done]

.