Request for good ways to create ‘info-box/call-outs’

[GarryP]

I would like to find a good way to create many ‘info-box/call-outs’ in Publisher, as shown in my attached example.

I will have dozens of these in the document so I want to try and make it as easy as possible for me to create and manipulate them.

The top example is paragraph-formatted - the outline box is done with paragraph decorations - and the pictograph is just an SVG float-pinned to the text.
The bottom example is an inline-pinned 2-column text frame where the pictograph is a font glyph.

My requirements are:

• The pictograph will be different in many instances of the info-boxes so should be easily changed in individual instances.
• The pictograph should automatically move with the paragraph and keep its place relative to the text.
• The pictograph would ideally be automatically vertically-centred within the box, because the amount of text isn’t known ahead of time and can be changed at any time.
• The pictograph can be SVG or a font, I’m not bothered which.

I tried using a bullet but I don’t have enough control over the placement of the pictograph (bullet is always aligned with the first line of text).
A drop-cap won’t give me what I need (as far as I can tell).

Using a float-pinned SVG (top example) I can manually re-position the SVG as needed but I would prefer not to have to.
Using an inline-pinned text frame has its own problems when it comes to text flow (see attached GIF), actually they both seem to have issues with text flow (see where the hand icon moves to relative to the box when it goes to the next frame).

So, I’m wondering if anyone has any good suggestions. I’m only in the initial stages of creating my document so this is not urgent but I would like to have something set-up before I start to really get into it.

[Pšenda]

Two-column table with border? 

[walt.farrell]

The image moving relative to the box may simply be an aspect of not setting the pinning options optimally. For example, have you considered:

Here's a .afpub in case it helps.

callouts.afpub

[GarryP]

Walt, the hand is pinned and ‘aligned’ (whatever that means in this context, it’s a bit confusing) to the first line of the text in the paragraph. However, the text frame on the right is wider than the text frame on the left so, as the text re-flows onto fewer lines, the hand seems to move down inside the paragraph-box because it’s shallower in the right-hand frame. If you know what I mean.

Psenda, I didn’t even think about trying a two-column table, no idea why. I’ve now tried and, after some experimentation, it looks like it might be the best solution so far. It’s not totally ideal for various reasons but if I can get some details worked out it might be the way to go.

Thanks to you both.

P.S. The documentation in the Help isn’t very good for Pinning. I realise this functionality hasn’t been there for very long but I would have expected more/better descriptions and, preferably, some examples to give the user some idea of what they can do. Just saying “modify settings to fit your requirements” doesn’t really give people much to go on. Examples show what people can do, and when people can see what’s possible they are more likely to experiment. People are less likely to try something if they can’t see the purpose of it.

[Pšenda]

36 minutes ago, GarryP said:

isn’t very good for Pinning

I completely miss the description and explanation for Anchor.

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, GarryP said:

the hand is pinned and ‘aligned’ (whatever that means in this context, it’s a bit confusing) to the first line of the text in the paragraph. However, the text frame on the right is wider than the text frame on the left so, as the text re-flows onto fewer lines, the hand seems to move down inside the paragraph-box because it’s shallower in the right-hand frame. If you know what I mean.

I'm not sure I understand, but I did notice that the location of the hand can need adjustment if the text is adjusted. That's controlled by its alignment options in the Pinning panel. And there may be other ways of setting those options that would be better; I'm not sure.

[GarryP]

The hand was pinned to the start of the first line at a certain offset down from that line.
When the paragraph containing that line moved to a wider frame the text automatically re-flowed into a paragraph which contained fewer lines.
Because of this, the hand moved closer to the bottom of the box because the box – the outline of the paragraph – was now shallower.
I hope I’ve explained it a bit better this time.

There are a few ways to align the hand to the text but I can’t see a way to align it to the centre of the paragraph which would be ideal in this instance.

[dominik]

7 minutes ago, GarryP said:

There are a few ways to align the hand to the text but I can’t see a way to align it to the centre of the paragraph which would be ideal in this instance.

Does this work for you?

• Make the frame vertical alignment 'Centre Vertically'.
• Pin the hand (or any other icon) to the first letter in the first line.
• In the Pinning Studio set 'Vertical align' to 'Inside Centre'. 'Of:' to 'Frame' and 'Offset' to '0mm'.

Cheers,
d.

[GarryP]

No, not really.
In the case where the paragraph is formatted to have an outline box via decorations (top example in my first post), a Vertical Alignment to Inside Centre of Frame means that the icon always stays in the same position (vertically) within the frame which means that it doesn’t move when text is added or removed above the outlined paragraph.
In the case where I have pinned a table or another text frame (bottom example in my first post) into the ‘parent’ frame, I can get the vertical alignment of the ‘child’ frame/table via the vertical alignment function of the child frame/table so that’s not the problem, the problem there is that the frame/table sometimes can’t be seen or is in a weird place (see GIF attached to first post).

I’ve attached a trimmed-down example of my document - where I am using paragraph decorations to create the outlined box - for experimentation. Note that the chevron is pointing across the centre of the box. Note also how, when you add lines above the info-box paragraph and that paragraph moves to the text frame on the right (which is wider), the chevron icon stops pointing across the centre of the box because the reduced number of lines gives a shallower box. As far as I can tell, there’s no way to vertically align the chevron to the centre of the paragraph. If I could do that then I would have my solution.

info-box.afpub

[dominik]

1 hour ago, GarryP said:

No, not really.
In the case where the paragraph is formatted to have an outline box via decorations (top example in my first post), a Vertical Alignment to Inside Centre of Frame means that the icon always stays in the same position (vertically) within the frame which means that it doesn’t move when text is added or removed above the outlined paragraph.
In the case where I have pinned a table or another text frame (bottom example in my first post) into the ‘parent’ frame, I can get the vertical alignment of the ‘child’ frame/table via the vertical alignment function of the child frame/table so that’s not the problem, the problem there is that the frame/table sometimes can’t be seen or is in a weird place (see GIF attached to first post).

I’ve attached a trimmed-down example of my document - where I am using paragraph decorations to create the outlined box - for experimentation. Note that the chevron is pointing across the centre of the box. Note also how, when you add lines above the info-box paragraph and that paragraph moves to the text frame on the right (which is wider), the chevron icon stops pointing across the centre of the box because the reduced number of lines gives a shallower box. As far as I can tell, there’s no way to vertically align the chevron to the centre of the paragraph. If I could do that then I would have my solution.

info-box.afpub

Thanks for the test file. I looked at it. You are right, a pinned text frame behaves a little funny.

I think what you are looking for is to pin an object vertically to 'Inside centre of paragraph'. But this is not available, yet. Worth a feature request 

d.

[Pšenda]

In two-column table is chevron position fine, but must be manualy set table width - table can't adapt to the text frame (or I can't do it)..

info-table.afpub

[GarryP]

dominik, I’ll try and remember to add a feature request when I get the time. I think it might be useful to be able to align other things to the vertical centre of a paragraph too, e.g. bullet points. Maybe there are other uses that someone could point out (pardon the pun). The more uses it has the more likely the developers maybe could look at implementing it (or, to put it another way, if it’s just me that wants it then it’s less likely to be implemented).

Psenda, I tried to use different Constraints on the table to see if I could get it to automatically resize but I got some weird results. In one experiment it almost worked but in another it went way too wide. I don’t know if Constraints are even meant to be used in this way so I don’t know if that’s a bug or not.

Until something comes up I think I’ll go with ‘Plan B’ as attached here. It's not exactly what I want but it's less hassle.

[Move Along People]

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[GarryP]

A nice trick haakoo but, unfortunately, the box doesn’t resize when it moves to a wider text frame.
Unless something comes up that meets all of the requirements I think I’m just going to go with something between my original requirement and my Plan B (above).