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Posted

I have a document with numbered headings, as in the screenshot.  Is it possible to "outdent" the numbered part to the left of the text frame, so that "1." are outside the frame to the left and "Entrance" is lined up with the body text below?

Screenshot 2025-01-24 at 20.32.49.png

Posted

Set the paragraph's left indent to 1/4 inch and its First Line indent to 0 (zero) inches.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 
Affinity Designer 2.5.7 | Affinity Photo 2.5.7 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.7 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

Posted
9 minutes ago, Ross Burton said:

Thanks, but that looks the same.

Look at this file. It is Publisher v 2. You can open it in any of the three Affinity applications.

In Out dent list.afpub

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 
Affinity Designer 2.5.7 | Affinity Photo 2.5.7 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.7 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

Posted

I suspect what I'm after isn't possible in Affinity, but I'd like the body in the second block to have the same indentation as the first with the number floating outside of the text frame.

I think the workaround is a wider frame and a left indent on everything.

Posted (edited)
6 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Look at this file. It is Publisher v 2. You can open it in any of the three Affinity applications.

I believe the OP wasn't asked how to create an outdented list but to hang the numbers outside of the frame.

There is a way to do it but it is a hack. The only text that can be hung outside of a frame is text formatted with Optical Alignment but the numbered part of a numbered list isn't normal text and isn't affected by optical alignment. However, if you number your list manually so that the numbers are real text, then you can set Optical Alignment to Manual and add a row with the characters 123456789 with a Left value of 250% or more. Ensure you enter a tab after the number and period for each paragraph, not a space, and set a tab stop at 0 so that the tab aligns the next character with the left edge of the frame.

I gave this a try and it worked fine but it is a bit of a hack.

Cheers

Edited by MikeTO
corrected grammar
Posted

@Ross Burton,

I (obviously) misunderstood your request. The easiest way to achieve what you want is to use the numbered list tabstop's distance to be the left indent for the paragraph style. Then all you have to do is make your text frame a bit wider. Or instead of a Tab stop in the numbered list you can use a fixed width space, just use the same width for the indent and the larger text frame size.

All your paragraph styles will need to have the same size Left indent but this is quite easy if you use a Group Style and base every paragraph off of that.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 
Affinity Designer 2.5.7 | Affinity Photo 2.5.7 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.7 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

Posted

I do not think that an outdented list achieved by character optical alignment is a hack, but rather a regular feature (the way the left-side optical alignment is supposed to work), and it can be coded as a paragraph style, and it can use list formatting and have optical alignment applied to its "bullets":

 

Posted

I called it a hack only because this wouldn't have worked this well in older page layout apps and I assumed it was just sneaking inside Affinity's redraw envelope. It turns out Affinity is much better and doesn't have a limited redraw envelope.

In the first page layout apps with optical alignment, memory was so limited that apps would redraw the frame and just a limited area around it, enough to accommodate one character outside the frame as well as the frame's stroke.

I tested it now with 100,000% left optical alignment and Affinity faithfully drew the text that far outside the frame and even worked correctly as I edited the text. Sometimes Affinity really amazes me. 🙂 

Posted

I don't think that using optical alignment is a hack. I also don't think that using a wider text frame is a work around. 

Both are viable methods. Because of all the manuals I did in VP, which could be used without text frames, with text frames or a combination, I would probably just use wider frames and inherit indentation. 

Posted

I'm having much trouble replicating that in my document with a numbered list, can someone share a working document? I can do the trick with text I type, but I can't get it to affect the generated numbers.

Posted
4 hours ago, MikeTO said:

In the first page layout apps with optical alignment, memory was so limited that apps would redraw the frame and just a limited area around it, enough to accommodate one character outside the frame as well as the frame's stroke.

I am not sure if I understand what you refer to. If InDesign, its optical alignment is a genuine feature that works pretty much differently than that of Affinity Publisher, which basically does not have anything "optical" about it. On the other hand, the trick to use kerning to achieve "outdent" off the text frame is a true hack that has occasionally editing-time redrawing issues (though not ones that appear in exports), but I do not think that this has anything to do with memory management.

outdent_id.thumb.png.bfff86f3b12327c91cdc99a3d2361937.png

This "apology" is not to diss the Affinity way of implementing "optical alignment". It is a fine and useful feature and uniquely Serif. I sincerely want to see more of this kind of development!

Posted

Yes, I had a recollection of something like this, though my acquaintance with QXP was very short (2017 and 2018). I did not get your other reference, was it to Ventura Publisher? That was my first page layout app at the end of the 80s, and I would not be surprised if this feature was supported already there... And if so, definitely not RAM related, just a different way of thinking.

Posted
25 minutes ago, lacerto said:

I am not sure if I understand what you refer to. If InDesign, its optical alignment is a genuine feature that works pretty much differently than that of Affinity Publisher, which basically does not have anything "optical" about it.

The "optical" in optical alignment refers to the text appearing aligned to the eye even though the left curve of an "O", part of the serif of an "A", or a quotation mark might be outside of the frame. My point was only that what we're talking about in this thread - extending characters far outside the frame with the use of optical alignment - wasn't possible in early apps due to limited system resources. Those apps ran on 8 MHz processors with 4MB of memory so resources were tight.

The earliest apps that added optical alignment features had two on/off toggles, one for hanging punctuation and one for optical alignment for things like "O" and "A". There was no ability to customize which characters were shifted and how much they were shifted. InDesign combined these two toggles into one which makes sense since they serve the same purpose but it has been a source of irritation to some users who want one but not the other. I think it was QuarkXPress version 8 that first allowed users to edit which characters were shifted and by how much.

Back on topic, Affinity has by far the best feature like this of any app. we can decide which characters are shifted and by how much. It's great. 🙂 

Posted
2 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

The "optical" in optical alignment refers to the text appearing aligned to the eye even though the left curve of an "O", part of the serif of an "A", or a quotation mark might be outside of the frame. My point was only that what we're talking about in this thread - extending characters far outside the frame with the use of optical alignment - wasn't possible in early apps due to limited system resources. Those apps ran on 8 MHz processors with 4MB of memory so resources were tight.

I do understand what it means. My point was that in Affinity apps there is no intellect as for applying optical alignment. The "early" apps applied true optical alignment based on font (glyph) bearings, and were not intended for any other use, hence the limited redraw. But this is just guessing, based on experience.

Posted
18 minutes ago, lacerto said:

... I did not get your other reference, was it to Ventura Publisher? That was my first page layout app at the end of the 80s, and I would not be surprised if this feature was supported already there... And if so, definitely not RAM related, just a different way of thinking.

Yes, Ventura Publisher.

Here are a couple screen shots where margins determine the left/right extents...

Here, the body text style is indented from the left 2" in order for the "body side" text style to "hang" to its left...

Capture_001212.png.dccc4633c81325240d449b020577e7a0.png

And here is the body side style with 0" left indent but with a right indent of 4.7"

Capture_001211.png.cfae73e71a448a03cd0a7d97d675c12d.png

 

Posted
9 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

... I think it was QuarkXPress version 8 that first allowed users to edit which characters were shifted and by how much.

Back on topic, Affinity has by far the best feature like this of any app. we can decide which characters are shifted and by how much. It's great. 🙂 

QXP is as flexible as APub as regards hanging whatever. Maybe a little more in some ways--such as this topic of properly hanging numbers et al.

Posted
4 hours ago, Ross Burton said:

I'm having much trouble replicating that in my document with a numbered list, can someone share a working document? I can do the trick with text I type, but I can't get it to affect the generated numbers.

Figured out what was happening - I've a numeric alternative and presumably Affinity is looking at the glyph actually used, and my 1234 are the lining digits not the old style digits.

Posted
1 hour ago, Ross Burton said:

Figured out what was happening - I've a numeric alternative and presumably Affinity is looking at the glyph actually used, and my 1234 are the lining digits not the old style digits.

You should be able to create a character style that uses the OpenType lining figures and use it for the numbers...if you haven't already thought about that.

Posted

BTW, I would be remiss if I didn't point out (again) that my choices as to what layout application I use (and I have/use just about all of them) is first and foremost dictated by the client. When I have a choice (and often I do), I'll pick the one I believe is best suited for the work. "Best suited" here means which one I think will do the job in the least amount of time. Other than that, I don't really care which one I use.

In that sense, I'm application agnostic.

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