Column rules

[Trevor J Richens]

Hi all,

Something I often use on PagePlus text boxes with columns is the "rules" feature to place a dividing line between each of the columns in the centre of the gutter.

I've not been able to find this in the text frame settings in Publisher. Can anyone advise me where this can be set up, or is it not available?

[GarryP]

Unfortunately Publisher doesn’t have this feature yet.
Depending on what you want to do you might be able to use a table instead of a multi-column text frame but there could be a lot of manual work involved and it’s not a real workaround for anything non-trivial.

[Trevor J Richens]

Rats! I what I thought, but I was also hoping that I was just missing some "hidden" feature somewhere.

My workaround at the moment will be to have a master page with columns and drawn rules and apply as required.

 

[GarryP]

That’s pretty much the work-around that I’ve been using myself.
I tried to use a table – to use the cell borders as rules – but there’s no way to get the text to flow between cells (as far as I know) so it doesn’t work well.
I tried to use a gradient in the text frame – where stops are placed at precise points so as to create some thin lines where they’re needed – but it’s a hassle and needs manual calculation and a lot of input.
I even thought about using paragraph decorations to create rules but they’re way too fiddly for this kind of thing and your text needs to fall just right for it to work with any degree of success.
Probably best to just wait and see what comes along in 1.7.1+

[Old Bruce]

I am not sure why you want the rules in the centre of the gutters but I do believe you can set the snapping to snap to the centre of the gutter as well as the sides. Not 100% sure, working off of my memory, but do check the Snapping Candidates.

[GarryP]

You can indeed snap to the centres of the gutters. I think it’s enabled by “Snap to Gaps and Sizes” but I can’t be absolutely sure. Thanks for that Old Bruce.
For an example of where you might want to do this, see here:

The vertical lines between the columns need to be in the centre of the column gutters.

[Aammppaa]

4 hours ago, GarryP said:

You can indeed snap to the centres of the gutters.

Hmm, can't get this to work, no matter what snapping options I select.

I am on Windows. I notice @Old Bruce is on Mac - so perhaps it is a Windows bug?

[Trevor J Richens]

Using Windows 10 and snapping works OK.

I found that I had other strange issues with Publisher that others didn't report.
Solution for me was to uninstall and delete the user AppData\Roaming folder for Publisher and then re-install - I have been just updated as new beta versions becam available.
That seemed to fix the problems... perhaps that might solve this one for you?

[Aammppaa]

@Trevor J Richens Thanks for the information.

Just updated to the current Beta, and decided to uninstall first to test out your suggestion.

I am still not getting snapping to the center of the gutter.

Are you sure you didn't add an even number of columns, so end up with a gutter in the center of the spread, and that was the cause of the snapping?

 

 

[dominik]

10 hours ago, Aammppaa said:

I am still not getting snapping to the center of the gutter.

Try snapping to the center of the gutter of a text frame's columns.

With column guides it seems to work only if there are two of them on the page.

d.

[GarryP]

On Windows I cannot snap to the centres of the gutters of the column guides but I can snap to the centres of the gutters on a multi-column text frame, which is what I want as it gives me more control over where the text frame can be.
As, Aammppaa suggests, I think ‘snapping to the centre of the gutter of the column guides only happening when there are only two columns’ may not actually be snapping to the centre of the gutter but is probably more likely to be snapping to the centre of the page. It just looks the same.
Attached is a short video of what I get.

[dominik]

57 minutes ago, GarryP said:

may not actually be snapping to the centre of the gutter but is probably more likely to be snapping to the centre of the page.

I, too, suspected this to be the case. With different left and right margins this should not work. I came to the conclusion that it is snapping to the centre of the textframe with two column guides. This is more of an academic discussion, though  After all, snapping to column gutters centre does not work.

d.