Span Columns

[loukash]

20 hours ago, mliving said:

uncheck No Break in Positioning and Transform

You meant "check No Break", right?

Other than that, it's a usable workaround, as long as you don't need free text flow without paragraph breaks:

My styles:

• "basictyle" = […] Font size: 10 pt; […] No break: off; […] Justify paragraph: Last line left; Leading mode: % height; etc.
• "span" = basictyle + Font: Myriad Pro; Font weight: Black; Font size: 20 pt; No break: on; Character fill: C:4 M:100 Y:100 K:20; Align paragraph: Left; First line indent: 0 mm; Space after: 10 pt
• "columnbreakspacebefore" = basictyle + Start: In Next Column; Only at Column Top; Space before: 30 pt

 

54 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Span columns as available in Both ID & QXP, have certain limitations.

They surely do, but in certain scenarios they are a huge timesaver.

[MikeW]

3 minutes ago, loukash said:

55 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Span columns as available in Both ID & QXP, have certain limitations.

They surely do, but in certain scenarios they are a huge timesaver.

Yep. Never said they don't save time.

I was just suggesting that Serif has an opportunity to improve on how ID/QXP spans/splits columns. Whether they choose to is another thing.

[Petar Petrenko]

On this site www.phoenixaerospace.us you can download the complete Corel Ventura 10 User Guide. It would be nice if the A-team read it and implement some of its capabilities in Publisher.

[loukash]

There would be an even more elegant workaround using Align To Baseline Grid with a specific Start Position, if it weren't for this bug:

 

My bug report here:

 

[MikeW]

That could/would work for when a span occurs at the top of a text frame, but I don't think it would aid a span occurring further down in the frame.

[loukash]

3 minutes ago, MikeW said:

I don't think it would aid a span occurring further down in the frame

Neither does @mliving's workaround.

[garrettm30]

My feeling is that those workarounds are more trouble than just using separate text frames until such time as real column spanning is implemented. Having a separate text frame is not so bad when it is at the top of a story. Spanning columns is really helpful when it is needed somewhere other than the top of the story, but these workarounds don't seem to be any help in such cases.

[loukash]

1 minute ago, garrettm30 said:

those workarounds are more trouble than just using separate text frames

You think so?

I'm currently toying with separate text frames from my above examples.
And pulling my hair out…

More as it develops.

[MikeW]

34 minutes ago, loukash said:

Neither does @mliving's workaround.

I use applications that minimize workarounds. It's overall quicker. 

[loukash]

1 hour ago, garrettm30 said:

Spanning columns is really helpful when it is needed somewhere other than the top of the story

1 hour ago, loukash said:

More as it develops.

Alright, so I've been trying to figure out how to do it with floating pinned text frame.
It would kinda sorta, if only… bugs or unpredictable or illogical – even though perhaps strictly-following-the-math – behavior.

Sigh.

Here a quick "pinned text frame 'workaround' with wrap" aka fake span, as set up in ID CS5.5, basically a no-brainer:

 

Importing the IDML into APu gives me this:

Nice try, but thanks, not there yet. Literally not there, because the frame anchor/pin is totally off.
(Also, where's the Wrap frame anyway? I can see the values and there's the extra spacing around the pinned frame, but no visual reference!)

So, let's try to clean it up to make it look the same.

That's the closest I get by trial and error because the text flow doesn't refresh when changing wrap values; everytime I had to change at least one pinned value as well to refresh the layout:

This is nuts.
Serif, back to the drawing board please!

 

1 hour ago, MikeW said:

I use applications that minimize workarounds. It's overall quicker. 

Fair enough: if budget is no issue, then I'm sure that Adobe will always happily take the money.
The won't get mine anymore, however. And as long as CS5 works on El Capitan…

Edited February 5, 2021 by loukash
terminology

[MikeW]

17 minutes ago, loukash said:

1 hour ago, MikeW said:

I use applications that minimize workarounds. It's overall quicker. 

Fair enough: if budget is no issue, then I'm sure that Adobe will always happily take the money.
The won't get mine anymore, however. And as long as CS5 works on El Capitan…

As for ID, I mainly use CS6, some CS4/5/5.5, depending on the client's needs. I rent ID CC on a month plan as needed (once or twice a year on avg.).

I do keep QXP up to date, as well as a few XTensions that speed up work. I also use Viva Designer (for only one client at this time). I have no qualms about spending money to make money. 

I purchased AD/APub which I'll keep up to date. If I should I ever actually need them/have request to use them, I'll use them in earnest to make money, too.

[Mike W077]

3 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

On this site www.phoenixaerospace.us you can download the complete Corel Ventura 10 User Guide. It would be nice if the A-team read it and implement some of its capabilities in Publisher.

Yes, yes, yes. The original VP engineers were very forward thinking and evidently were designers themselves. The power of VP has yet to be matched, although it was hampered by being limited (mostly) to the Wintel platform and now technology has passed it by. However, many of the features such as paragraph tagging, span columns, and others (such as book publishing tools) are still very needed in the industry. Print is going to make a big comeback and we need good tools like APub. 

[loukash]

Another day, another workaround:

 

The secret:
Frame top inset & baseline grid, raised character baseline, invisible (here made transparent yellow) floating pinned rectangles with text wrap as spacers. The text flow is still a problem – see colors – so column rules may be necessary for clarifications.

[Jennigma]

Please please please implement span columns. I've made the switch from InDesign, and this is killing me. My usual workflow is to import text, apply styles, and then start adding images and pull quotes to the pages from the beginning, trusting the layout to flow from page to page. I have a spanning title style that marks the start of new sections, but there are always story adjustments that cause changes in exactly how the text flows. Having to come back and move all the separate text frames that make up headings to align with section breaks is a nightmare.

[3darkman]

I really don't understand why something so requested is neglected. Be it the column span or put the definition of columns in the paragraph itself and not in the text frame.

[loukash]

9 hours ago, 3darkman said:

put the definition of columns in the paragraph itself and not in the text frame.

Text frame columns are – logically – a text frame attribute. That's why they are where they are.
You can also make basic adjustments to them from the context toolbar while a text frame is selected.

Whereas columns as a paragraph attribute is exactly what the much requested span & split columns are about.

In other words, those are two different things.

[MikeTO]

Based on my positive experience with Affinity Designer, I just bought Affinity Publisher. I think it's great but then I found that there's no ability to span columns. I'm laying out a book with hundreds of write-ups in it and some need to be in 2 columns and some should span both columns. As far as I can tell, there's no way to do this sort of automated layout with Affinity Publisher other than as a one-time manual exercise. Is this correct? Thanks.

[loukash]

13 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

As far as I can tell, there's no way to do this sort of automated layout with Affinity Publisher other than as a one-time manual exercise. Is this correct?

As long as the span column is always on top of a text frame, it's manageable with paragraph & character styles. See examples above, the main trick being Character > Positioning & Transform > No Break with Paragraph > Left Align. More fine tuning will be necessary though.

[jmwellborn]

Welcome to the Forums @MikeTO😊   You might look up this comment stream (you will have to type "Auto link with multiple columns"  into the Search box)  and see if there are any suggestions there that could assist you.   I hope this will help. 

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, loukash said:

As long as the span column is always on top of a text frame, it's manageable with paragraph & character styles. See examples above, the main trick being Character > Positioning & Transform > No Break with Paragraph > Left Align. More fine tuning will be necessary though.

Thanks for the tip. My 2-column span won't always be at the top or bottom.editing.

The quick snapshot I've attached is from the excellent AIA Guide to Chicago architecture which has a layout similar to what I want to accomplish. This book has numbered descriptions for each building, most of which set to single column. Some of the longer ones, like #82 shown here, are set to span two columns. I would try to avoid a mid-page span like this during final fine-tuning but like this book's composer, it may not always be avoidable.

[fordtimelord]

I’m going on two years since I first posted to this thread and I still use indesign for any serious projects, only because of this. 

[loukash]

2 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

a layout similar to what I want to accomplish

That's currently not possible in Publisher if you want to use a single-text-frame-per-page layout.
InDesign can do.

[Catshill]

10 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Thanks for the tip. My 2-column span won't always be at the top or bottom.editing.

The quick snapshot I've attached is from the excellent AIA Guide to Chicago architecture which has a layout similar to what I want to accomplish. This book has numbered descriptions for each building, most of which set to single column. Some of the longer ones, like #82 shown here, are set to span two columns. I would try to avoid a mid-page span like this during final fine-tuning but like this book's composer, it may not always be avoidable.

Have you looked at using text frames to do this? That is how I layout magazines.

[loukash]

1 hour ago, Catshill said:

using text frames

You could pin 1-column text frames, but then you'd have to cut the text out of the flow because linked frames cannot be pinned into themselves, and the pinned frame must remain on one page. This may be easy to do on a few pages but not in …

15 hours ago, MikeTO said:

a book with hundreds of write-ups in it

 

[PGT7]

All this is so simple achieve in InDesign, not least that, but also promotes a structured layout with CONSISTENT spacing between Spanned headings and both preceding and following text. I often have to create a new design with style sheets ... then that can be implemented by colleagues/assistants with the confidence they will follow the house style.

With this implemented, you can simply throw a complete text flow [pre-formatted] at the pages and it then lays itself out automatically [chapter openers, opening paras section headers x-heads pull-quotes and running text] as in Ventura Publisher or InDesign. Then all you need to do is to go through adding illustrations and make surreptitious text edits to get columns to balance and the pages "work".

I hunted with glee when Affinity's latest Publisher drop [1.9.1] came along, but Span Columns was missing. ;~{{

Please Affinity, Publisher is a huge achievement as many others agree, but Span Columns for some is a major omission IMHO