PeeGeeBee Posted January 27 Posted January 27 Does anyone have any experience in producing bilingual books or books with a different 'threaded text' on left- and right-facing pages? I've done this a few times in the past with InDesign but this is my first time to try it with Publisher and I'm wondering if anyone can guide me. I'm hoping to import two separate multipage text files, one into the verso, the other into the recto pages, and afterwards balance the two so that they make sense for a bilingual reader. I've learned a lot from this forum already, so thanks in advance! Quote
MikeTO Posted January 27 Posted January 27 Hi, this comes up from time to time. It's a bit tricky because the AutoFlow feature which will create as many pages of text frames as required to fit the story doesn't work with documents that have separate stories on each side of a facing-page spread. I suggested an improvement to AutoFlow to address there here (see the red text): Quote Download a free PDF manual for Affinity Publisher 2.5 Download a quick reference chart for Affinity's Special Characters Affinity 2.5 for macOS Sequoia 15.3, MacBook Pro (M4 Pro) and iPad Air (M2)
MikeTO Posted January 27 Posted January 27 The trick to doing this is to draw your text frames on the master page. Draw separate left and right frames. In the first spread, paste all the left-side text into the left-side frame. Repeat for the right-side frame. AutoFlow from the left-side frame (Shift+click the Text Flow Out control) and Publisher will create as many pages as required. Repeat from the right-side frame. This works correctly in 2.5.7 but there's a bug in the 2.6 beta which makes this a bit tricky. Quote Download a free PDF manual for Affinity Publisher 2.5 Download a quick reference chart for Affinity's Special Characters Affinity 2.5 for macOS Sequoia 15.3, MacBook Pro (M4 Pro) and iPad Air (M2)
thomaso Posted January 27 Posted January 27 Another workaround may be using copy of a master spread (one master for the first and its copy for the other language) after the required text flow has been created for the first language. Then the copy get its story master text frame moved to the opposite page and it's existing text gets replaced by the other language on the document pages. Unfortunately APub still doesn't offer Global Layers, though they were kind of announced some years ago: Quote macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1
PeeGeeBee Posted January 27 Author Posted January 27 Thanks so much. This is hugely helpful. And something has been preventing me from updating from 2.5.5 (If it ain't broke, etc), so I might be in luck. Thanks again for taking the time! Quote
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.