recommended way to structure book incl Part/Section dividers

[tariq]

Hi

I'm struggling to understand the correct way of using Publisher.

I realise Publisher has it's own model for the user to understand - eg text frames are items on the layer structure, and the hierarchy there has meaning ... all good stuff.

I previously posted having trouble with getting embedded content (images) to behave in a very common way - to flow with the text, and for the text to flow around them. That was a big discussion and it is still not intuitive.

Anyway - this question is about the best / correct AP way of working - how do I structure a book so that:

• section pages have a different design to normal pages which follow a master page design
• section pages have a large sized text and an image - both of which, together are centred on the page
• there can be several chapters in a section
• chapter heading have a large font style, as do subheadings within chapters which have a smaller font size than the chapter headings

(see image attached)

 

Styles

Now the wrong way would be to "press enter lots of times and use centre alignment" .. we know that's not how you allow for reflowable text and also misses out on the power of styles. 

So let me think aloud about styles.

Yes the chapter heading and the subheadings can have styles defining the font size and typeface. Great. I can apply things like spacing after each of these headings in the style to create extra space to the subsequent body text. Good stuff!

The styles themselves are based on the already configured Heading1/2 etc and not what I did before which was to create a new style based on "Body". Is this good / bad?

In fact previously I even created a new body style based on "Body" to keep it separate - is this a good idea or not?

 

Section / Part Dividers

Onto the Section divider pages. Others call these Parts elsewhere. They contain Chapters.

These should always be on the right hand odd-numbered pages. What's the best way to do this?

Should they be based on a different master page? In which case does the text importing have to be done per-section?

How do you best align the "section title and image" to the centre of the page? Currently I'm using a new text frame which is not a master page frame to contain the text, and them anchoring an image below it and then adjusting the height of the text frame so the content looks about right. This is very wrong and I want to know how I should really do it.

 

Image / Frame Anchoring Problems Again

I'm still struggling with image placement. Images or Picture frames should be able to be treated like a character and flow with text. Every time I create one it has text flowing under it.. I've been told NOT to use the Text Wrap options previously. I will assert that the default for a new frame should not have text flowing under it .. it creates work to give it the intuitive behaviour. The frames are placed not where expected .. only the "float with anchor" option seems to make them be placed intuitively.

Previously members suggested  I use careful copy and paste to first create a frame them paste it where the text cursor was. This seems wrong.

(attached is a video of me trying to insert image context that flows with the text .. you can see that we eventually get there but it's not intuitive and I think I'm still doing it wrong with the cut-n-paste hack)

..

So - this is all sounds like I really haven't understood the core model of AP. 

..

Tutorial Video?

It would be great if perhaps there was a tutorial video put up to show how to correctly structure a book - covering eg

• the correct use of styles
• section/part dividers with different designs to normal content pages
• reflowable images anchored inline as text (sorry, really struggling)

 

I have over the years used things like InDesign, Scribus, Latex, .. so I'm not averse to new models but something about 

 

 

PS - why does the default text have no style at all .. shouldn't it have the Body or Base styles applied at minimum?

 

[Callum]

Hi Tariq,

There isn't really one specific way to make a book in Affinity Publisher. The same is the case with styles, there’s three different ways to deal with styles. Create a new style, duplicate it from another style or base it on an existing style. I'd play with each to see which fits into your workflow.

I'm not sure on Part dividers, perhaps another user can share their experiences on using part dividers in their Publisher documents ?

Image anchoring is working for me when I try it here. I can see someone else has replied to your other post regarding this here: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/98481-more-intuitive-embedded-content-frames/&tab=comments#comment-527107

Thanks

C