Truly separate margins for headers/footers vs for pages?!

[Usable Thought]

I'm trying out the demo of Nisus Writer Pro to see if my girlfriend, who I help with tech stuff, will be more comfortable with it than with Microsoft Word. I like most of the application so far, but I find the header/footer controls to be bizarre, to say the least. I have looked in the doco (not much help so far) and searched these forums (ditto) so I am posting a new topic with this question:

Is there any way to set top/bottom margins for the headers & footers separately from the related top/bottom margins for the main text area on the page?

Pretty much every other page layout program I have ever used - inDesign, Word, FrameMaker, Pages, etc. - allows you to do just that - for example, to have a footer whose top starts at 10.5 inches from the top of the page, and a main page area whose bottom is set at 10 inches ditto, leaving a half-inch gap where no text of any sort is allowed.

So far, I don't see how this can be done in Nisus Writer Pro. For example if I move the top of the footer area down to where I want it (let's say 10.5 inches from the top of the page), the bottom of the main page area automatically comes down to the same height. It is truly weird, and it's really fouling up my attempts to create decent templates. If this is the only behavior that Nisus Writer Pro allows, then I'll have to reject it and get something like Pages for my girlfriend. Which would be a pity given how friendly the app is in other ways.

[ptram]

Maybe the quickest way to adjust header/footer and body margins is by grabbing them with the mouse, and dragging. I don't know if this sounds bizzare, but I find it rather natural.

Otherwise, the Margins palette shows them as numeric fields, and this is probably more precise, even is slower.

Paolo

[Usable Thought]

Thanks, but this does not address my question at all. It's not "how to set header-footer margins," but "why can't I create separate top-bottom borders for headers/footers vs. main column of text?"

[xiamenese]

Thanks, but this does not address my question at all. It's not "how to set header-footer margins," but "why can't I create separate top-bottom borders for headers/footers vs. main column of text?"

Nisus Writer Express/Pro is a word-processor; InDesign, FrameMaker, PageMaker are DTP apps ... there's a world of difference between the two in terms of the control over the precise placing of text boxes. Pages behaves more like a quasi-DTP application in this. So if that's really what you want, then you're going to have to look to Pages, or elsewhere for the moment.

[Usable Thought]

Nisus Writer Express/Pro is a word-processor; InDesign, FrameMaker, PageMaker are DTP apps ... there's a world of difference between the two in terms of the control over the precise placing of text boxes. Pages behaves more like a quasi-DTP application in this.

How about Microsoft Word? That's the standard-setter for word processors, no matter whether you like Word or hate it. And OpenOffice also has this functionality - and it too is a word processor. If Nisus doesn't provide the equivalent, I'd consider it to be missing a very useful feature.

But I'm not interested in arguing. I just want to find out whether the functionality is available and I'm somehow not seeing it. If it's not there, it's not there. Does anyone know the answer?

[martin]

The distances are currently linked in Nisus Writer; the endpoint of the header is always the starting point of the main body area. Sorry for any inconvenience.

For the header this is no great omission, as the superfluous area is just whitespace, so creating a taller header is effectively the same thing. Admittedly the footer is a problem, because the content appears at the very top of the footer area. You might be able to work around the problem by increasing the line height to position the text, or inserting a table with no borders and using the padding/alignment for positioning. It really depends on what you want to place in the footer. It's a kludge, but may meet your needs.

[Usable Thought]

Thanks for the info. You're right, it's mostly a problem for the footer, and there are workarounds such as the one you suggest; or increasing baseline; etc.

What really has me bothered now is the problem I posted about separately a moment ago - the fact that different line heights for a paragraph force the text to start at lower or higher points on the page. I see from your reply that nothing can be done about this currently. It's a deal-killer for me, alas.

[Groucho]

Admittedly the footer is a problem, because the content appears at the very top of the footer area.

Maybe a vertical alignment might help, then, like any html document. Or space before paragraph the way it works in Word…

Henry.