More space above first chapter page Heading

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mhackney
Posts: 37
Joined: 2017-02-22 15:29:38

Re: More space above first chapter page Heading

Post by mhackney »

And that is what I did - used your suggestion to put the extra first page space in the header. It seems to be working fine. This off page layout issue seems to be an anomoly and might be related to background processing/layout?
adryan wrote:G’day, mhackney et al

Hmmm, that does present a problem.

It’s actually a very long time since I’ve needed to create a Table of Contents for a long document. But I now see that you can’t reference Header text in a TOC. On the one hand, this is quite reasonable when you consider that a Header can be repeated. On the other hand, it could be argued that the program design should accommodate such an arrangement, by allowing Header content to be marked for TOC inclusion, but with the TOC only referring to the first instance of that Header. One way of achieving this would be to permit text in the Header of the first page of a Section to be incorporated in a TOC. I imagine a macro could handle this.

Be that as it may, you could still use the technique I described to effect your different spacing. It’s just that the chapter title on the first page of a chapter will need to be positioned in the main text body beneath the (largely blank) Header. On subsequent pages the title can go in the Header.

Cheers,
Adrian
mhackney
Posts: 37
Joined: 2017-02-22 15:29:38

Re: More space above first chapter page Heading

Post by mhackney »

Yeah, I think some of my odd issues are due to layout processing at this point. I'm avoiding text boxes and anchored images as per questions I asked earlier this year.
phspaelti wrote:
mhackney wrote:I had not considered putting the chapter number and title in the header. Is this really common practice? I've not seen that on any of the publishing tips sites I've read. Will content in the Header be picked up in a TOC?
I totally disagree with adryan on the idea of putting a chapter title inside a header, even a non-repeating one. That completely violates the logic of documents. Headers are for information that runs "alongside" the document.

Of course you may want to also put the chapter heading inside the header as well to create a "running header". This can be done with a cross-reference that copies the text. But of course you could also just retype it.

As to why the heading overlaps the header, this should not happen (unless it's a floating text box). It's possible that Nisus momentarily did not update the text layout, which might happen especially on long complex documents with with many elements that affect text layout. Whenever such things happen I would recommend saving the file and then closing and reopening.
adryan
Posts: 561
Joined: 2014-02-08 12:57:03
Location: Australia

Re: More space above first chapter page Heading

Post by adryan »

G’day, Philip et al

With respect, I would suggest that there is no such thing as “the logic” of documents. Nor can one prescribe what can, and cannot, occupy Headers, Footers or whatever.

For my money, what occupies a Header is part of the document, not something that “runs ‘alongside’ the document”. Just look at how many business letters have corporate identity data (including logos) and contact details in Headers and Footers, on the first page at least. And where would the rest of a document that referenced page numbers in the main text body be without Footers that contained those page numbers? Would these be the same documents if such “ancillary” data were removed? I don’t think so. But we can leave such deliberations to the philosophers and lawyers. Suffice to say, Nisus Writer’s own Find/Replace dialog by default operates on all these parts of a document, not just in the main text body.

As with most things in the world of computing, and indeed in life in general, there are often many ways to achieve a given goal. None of them is necessarily “the best” way, whatever that might mean. These forums are full of ideas people have had to stretch the capacity of Nisus products to the absolute limit. One chooses from the tools on offer, uses them to create other tools, combines them with yet more tools from other applications and the operating system, and eventually arrives at a solution to the initial problem. It is counterproductive to be dogmatic about what one can and cannot do, or what one should and should not do.

Upon further consideration, though, I am persuaded that, in the case of a book manuscript at least, it is on balance better to place chapter titles primarily in the main text body than solely in Headers.

Philip’s suggestion of placing a cross-reference in a Header is interesting. However, formatting options are restricted and unexpected behavior can be observed. The alternative suggestion of retyping (or copying and pasting) the text is probably to be preferred.

Cheers,
Adrian
MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, 2021)
macOS Ventura
Nisus Writer user since 1996
Groucho
Posts: 497
Joined: 2007-03-03 09:55:06
Location: Europe

Re: More space above first chapter page Heading

Post by Groucho »

Unless specified otherwise in a paragraph style, NWP should insert an invisible, empty paragraph after every break. Something visible to NWP only. If I remember correctly I suggested so years ago. I insert an empty paragraph with as small a size as possible, but have to remove it when I export the file to, for example, Libreoffice.

Henry.
adryan
Posts: 561
Joined: 2014-02-08 12:57:03
Location: Australia

Re: More space above first chapter page Heading

Post by adryan »

G’day, Henry et al

By “every break”, I presume you mean things like Section and Page Breaks. Is the idea then that this empty paragraph would be available for line-spacing adjustments in the succeeding Section or Page? I’m curious as to why one might want this as a default behavior.

I seem to recall needing in the past to place an empty paragraph at the beginning of the very first page of some documents, but I’m afraid I can’t recall the exact circumstances, except that content was derived from a combination of AppleScript scripts and Nisus macros. I still create such documents, but nowadays they don’t require this initial empty paragraph.

Cheers,
Adrian
MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, 2021)
macOS Ventura
Nisus Writer user since 1996
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