set guides to page instead of margin (Publisher)

[vmara]

I found a similar request for this in V1 Feedback, but not V2, so hopefully I'm not repeating (and the V1 request had no responses anyhow). It would be really nice to have a toggle in the guides menu to set them to the page/spread instead of the margins. Currently, if I want the guides to spread to the full page, that means I can't have margins. I know the workaround for creating an object guide which can be used in place of margins, but still it would seem more intuitive and easier for workflow to just have it as a checkbox or switch in the guides window.

[vmara]

I realized immediately after posting this that I've been using column guides this whole time when I probably should have been using grids and the grid/axis manager. Whoops.

[vmara]

Okay after messing around with the grids manager, I believe I was correct the first time with using column guides. Or maybe there should be a reworking of the whole system. What I'm trying to create is a layout guide or a layout grid, I don't particularly care what it is called, but something where I can say "I need this many columns, this many rows" and don't have to do math to figure out the size, and where I can set it to the page edge and not the margins. Sorry for the triple post.

[GarryP]

The Column Guides are always calculated in relation to the Margins, if they exist, because that’s how they are supposed work.

The Margins exist as a way to remind you of where you say body text should/shouldn’t be.

Column Guides exist as a way to divide the space between the Margins into columns and rows to make it easier to create a layout of body text between the Margins.

If you don’t want to have Margins on a particular spread then don’t apply Margins to that spread and don’t use a master page spread with Margins applied to it. That way you can have Column Guides which are calculated from the edges of the spread.

Margins and Column Guides are there as a reminder for you, the software doesn’t care if they are there or not, so if you don’t want to have either just don’t use either.

[loukash]

@vmara, you can set up multiple Master Pages, each with its own margin (incl. "margin = 0" if you wish) and its own column guides.
You can then apply multiple Master Pages to a page. They will appear as multiple MP layers in the Layers panel.

Now, while you can't see all your margins and column guides from all applied MPs at once, you can switch them on the fly just by dragging the respective MP layer to the bottom of the layer stack in the Layers panel. The "margin master" at the bottom will take over.

What doesn't work is to apply different colors to different margin/column masters. The colors are obviously global.

[vmara]

5 hours ago, GarryP said:

the software doesn’t care if they are there or not

okay but like why do you have to be an ass about it?

Your response was unhelpful and rude. I understand the basics of how everything works, but there exists a need for a layout guide feature, wherein the limitations of the column guides falls short. For example, when setting up spreads that utilize images, the images don't need to fall within the margins, so a grid system that goes to the page edge is useful, but that doesn't mean margins aren't necessary: you may need text on images to fall within margins based on importance or readability, or you may need to overlay text on the images and you want it to fall within the margins.

You may say that I should use the grid manager instead for this, but I would counter that you cannot input a number of columns and rows in the grid manager, you can only set specific size grid sections. And trying to set a grid with gutter, even if you get all the math correct, doesn't work the same because it starts from the top left with the gutter spacing instead of the grid section. Yes you can move the start section of the grid, but that requires even more math. What I'm asking for is something more intuitive, a layout guide manager, or, even simpler, a tick box for "set to margins/set to page". And because I think it will annoy you even more (though I can't say what I did to push your buttons in the first place): InDesign has this feature.

2 hours ago, loukash said:

You can then apply multiple Master Pages to a page.

@loukash thank you so much for this helpful tip. The current workaround of setting up master pages with guides where I want the margins to be seems to be a little easier than switching MPs around BUT learning that I can set multiple masters on one spread/page will certainly be useful in the future.

[loukash]

6 minutes ago, vmara said:

workaround of setting up master pages with guides where I want the margins to be

I wouldn't call this a "workaround" in the first place. Using multiple Master Pages with different settings on a single page is an integral part of the Publisher workflow. (Vive la différence… ) This is well documented in general. What's likely undocumented though, is that only the bottom-most MP layer defines the margins of a page. Although I vaguely recall similar scenarios being discussed before, with a staff confirmation that this is "by design".

[GarryP]

15 minutes ago, vmara said:

okay but like why do you have to be an ass about it?

Your response was unhelpful and rude.

I certainly didn’t intend to be either unhelpful, or rude, or an ass, and I don’t see how I was doing so in what I wrote.

I was just stating that the software gives you Margins and Column Guides as ‘helpers’ for the user rather than their being something that’s necessary for the document.

Do you think it’s possible that you read certain intentions into what I wrote which weren’t actually there?