Are Side Heads possible?

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greenmorpher
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Post by greenmorpher »

Derick wrote:Geoff-
why not just apply the paragraph style, type the heading, hit tab, type the paragraph, then select the heading and apply the character style? Or go back and style it later?

Of course it's a personal preference
Hi Derick

That's perfectly possible too, of course, as is manual adjustment to overcome the problem of multideck side heads, but the application of Styles on the fly makes for a more elegant solution, to my way of thinking. The other thing is that once Styles are allocated, you can change them en masse using "Select Style Range" or "Select All Style" which makes for very fast formatting changes document-wide.

Also, once into a routine of keyboard shortcuts to switch Styles, I don't find it a burden to insert them as I go.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com
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greenmorpher
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Post by greenmorpher »

I mentioned earlier that I hardly thought it was likely that NWPro could provide the facilities of a program like FrameMaker, which was developed over nearly 20 years specifically as a technical book/manual desktop publishing program and was one of a kind.

It also cost somewhere between 10 and 20 times the price of NWPro and had/has (there are sitll many users around) a learning curve of Himalayan proportions. But it could do sideheads with ease and grace, and lots of other things, including handling footnotes -- something which only one other DTP program that I know of could do.

That program is RagTime -- and I suspect it might do sideheads pretty well too. Of course, you are looking at spending $1000, not the measly $79 Nisus is asking for NWPro.

There is one DTPish way of adding sideheads in NW Pro. That is to produce them in a LinkBack graphics program then place them as graphics set to stick with the paragraph.

Ooops! That won't work becasue of the structure of NW Pro's indents. I have started a new thread on this.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com
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greenmorpher
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Post by greenmorpher »

HELLO! HERE'S SOMETHING!

Messing around with graphics and indents (see the new thread "Problems with indents ..." I came across something else.

I mentioned above the possibility of using sideheads generated into a LinkBack enabled graphics program.

There are problems doing this when you insert them into the indent space but ...

You CAN place them outside the text margin and still have them linked to the paragraphs to which they apply.

So for a document with side heads, set a generous left margin. Enter your body copy as normal -- no indents for the side heads -- in the text space thus created, then type your side heads into the graphics program and copy (or cut) and paste into NW. Select so the box around them shows, set them for "Moves with paragraph" in the Images palette, then drag them into the margin between the paper edge and the text margin. If you wish to change them, you can double click to open the graphics program for editing.

True, you would have to do each sidehead separately, but it wouldn't be hard.

An irritation is that if you select a paragraph and drag it, while it takes the image along with it, it redefines itself as "Inline with text" in the process, so you have to redefine it as "Moves with paragraph" and drag it out into the margin again.

But if the paragraph moves because of text added or removed above it, there is no problem -- the graphic simply moves along with the text.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com
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