Wave or image decorations for title?

[mykee]

For my headline style, I want to draw a wavy line, which I wanted to do with the Decorations styling, but I can't find a wavy line. For some titles it would be nice to have a different kind of decoration (like an image or a special/ornamental character), but I can't find a way to tie it to the style either.

How can I add title-related images, ornamental characters to a style?

 

[GarryP]

Paragraph Decorations can only be straight lines or non-rounded rectangles.

If you can give us a visual example of what you want, and tell us how the ‘decoration’ should change according to the changes in the text – e.g. height, length, stretch, repeat, etc. –  then someone might be able to come up with an alternative solution.

[mykee]

Here's an example, I want a wavy line like this under Heading 1, which is style related, so it can depend on the width of the heading or it can go from margin to margin.

[GarryP]

Thanks for the example.

I think that might be tricky to produce.

It might be possible with multiple “Bottom” decorations, maybe using very specific (different) dash patterns and some very precise indents, but I have no idea how well it would work in practice if it could be done at all.

Maybe someone else has a better idea.

As a long shot, does your “Heading 1” text always start at the same place on the page? For example, on a chapter start page?
If so, it might be possible to use a master page to replicate the wavy line over multiple pages, using a curve as in my attached example.

[mykee]

Heading 1 always starts on a new page, but not always on the same page (so even or odd - variable). I thought of tying it to a style so that the distance, size, scale from the heading could be adjusted. Since each heading is a different length, so master pages would unfortunately only complicate things in my opinion.

[GarryP]

Unless I’m misunderstanding, you cannot “tie” anything to a Paragraph Style (unless I’ve ‘missed a memo’).

A Paragraph Style can only contain the things it can control and you cannot ‘attach’ anything to them.

In other words, the only things you can put in a Paragraph Style are the things you can set in the Paragraph formatting options.

[mykee]

That leaves the creation of the vector wave. I watched your video on how you do it, and I'll try to do something with the waves. Thank you very much!

 

[GarryP]

To make the wavy line, as I did in my example, you can:

1. With the Pen Tool, draw a horizontal straight line;
2. With the Node Tool, add a load of nodes by clicking in lots of places on that line, doesn’t matter where;
3. Use the Align and Distribute functionality to distribute the nodes evenly along the line;
4. With the Node Tool, select every other node;
5. With the Node Tool, drag the selected nodes up (or down) a little;
6. With the Node Tool, select all nodes and then make them Smooth via the Context Toolbar.

[MikeW]

26 minutes ago, mykee said:

Heading 1 always starts on a new page, but not always on the same page (so even or odd - variable). I thought of tying it to a style so that the distance, size, scale from the heading could be adjusted. Since each heading is a different length, so master pages would unfortunately only complicate things in my opinion.

Perhaps this:

 

[mykee]

Thanks for both tips, I'll try them and whichever I can use better I'll choose. Thank you very much!

[mykee]

18 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Perhaps this:

I used -240 for tracking, and Arial Unicode as font. Thanks, that's another brilliant tip!

[GarryP]

I prefer MikeW’s solution.
It looks easier to create, modify and use.
(And it’s closer to traditional typesetting, which is nice.)