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A single text frame with mutlipe column settings?


marcuslayton

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Howdy All -

 

I have a large text frame on a flyer - what we want is it to have the top section be one column and the bottom section be two columns. We want this to be in a single text frame so it can properly be center justified within the entire text frame and adjusted to fit in the same text frame.

 

Ideas? Thanks!

 

~Mark

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Why not have a separate frame for the top (single column) data which extends from top to center of flyer. Then create two separate frames on bottom half extending from center to bottom and spaced equally left to right. Set the top frame to bottom-alignment, centered. Set two lower frames to top alignment, centered. Text in all three frames will be sandwiched together and spread out toward top and bottom as necessary.

 

Without trying it out myself, I further wonder if one could have the upper frame overlap the bottom two frames (so that it's bottom edge was lower than center of flyer). Then set the upper frame to center align top-to-bottom and enable runaround for the bottom two frames. If the content of the upper frame needs to extend below the halfway point, the text in two lower columns would be forced down to compensate. (This is assuming that the upper portion contains the "headline" information, meant to be read primary to the content of the two lower frames.)

 

I know -- no JS in my solution. ;) If I'm completely missing the goal/point, could you post a PDF showing what you would "like" the final output to look like with an equivalent amount of text in each area to what the data would contain?

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Oh i think we are on the same page on what they are wanted. Your solution is almost exactly what it is posted as now.

 

What they are running into is that the horizontal center of these 2 parts is fixed - though they are finding they need more variability in where that horizontal center is.

 

The top part may be 2-6 lines of text and the two column portion may be 3-10 lines and they wanted that horizonatal center to dynamically be placed between the two different parts. It would also allow them a more uniform shrink to fit inbetween the 3 different frames.

 

Any way to change the number of columns within a single text box?

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close - i should have included what they were doing in the bottom coulmn

 

in the bottom portion they cut and paste bullet points from word - and those bullets frequenty wrap more that one line - and they wrap in their own text box or column correctly

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HEY! i think this is going to work for them! eric the guru - thank you sir!

 

i will use the table with just a couple of changes, but i think the table is the way this can get done. i am going to have just 2 multiline text resources that they paste there data in - column 1 and column 2 and not individuals for bullets - mainly because that is hwo they are used to enterning their data.

 

thanks again!

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You can set up a frame with multiple columns and use the <p paragraphplacement="straddleall"> tag to switch to single-column mode. This is useful for a headline-type effect.

 

Dan, is there an updated Tag Reference Guide we can download? Mine does not make reference to this attribute of the <p> tag.

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You can set up a frame with multiple columns and use the <p paragraphplacement="straddleall"> tag to switch to single-column mode. This is useful for a headline-type effect.

You better have a good excuse for waiting until now to share that information. You know how long I searched the documentation for something like that? :rolleyes:

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Dan, is there an updated Tag Reference Guide we can download? Mine does not make reference to this attribute of the <p> tag.

It's in there. It's just kind of hidden under the section "Attributes Used to Alter and Adjust Text Flows" instead of with the other <p> tag attributes. Search the PDF for "straddleall". Actually, there's a typo in there too, but the syntax I posted above is correct.

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It's in there. It's just kind of hidden under the section "Attributes Used to Alter and Adjust Text Flows" instead of with the other <p> tag attributes. Search the PDF for "straddleall". Actually, there's a typo in there too, but the syntax I posted above is correct.

 

Very nice. I see about leaving out the space as well. Thanks. This could be a handy way to avoid having to use a table for simple things.

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The text frame needs to be centered - it appears that using the "straddleall" makes it top justified regardless of the setting. Is there a /p that i am missing?

i made the template simpler - and posted the text area in question - notice that the text field actually isn't centered

Are you talking about the box with the "FrontMiddleTextReturn" variable? A couple of things:

 

First, you need to turn off Copyfitting for the frame in order for vertical alignment to have any effect.

 

Second, vertical alignment doesn't really apply to multi-column frames anyway, because the text flows from one column to the next. The issue is that both multi-frame flow functionality and multi-column text frame functionality were designed with the assumption that if you're flowing to a new frame or column, the frame or column you're coming from must have been filled up, so the vertical alignment setting is not taken into account, except for the last frame (or column). That said, you can put a <page destination=topofcolumn balance=true> tag at the end of the multi-column text to "balance" it out between the columns, but vertical alignment still won't apply. The design of the composition engine simply didn't take that particular combination of features into account. (Again, the "straddleall" feature was designed with something like a headline in mind, above multi-column text that would ultimately flow to another page, like in a newspaper, so vertical alignment doesn't come into play in that kind of scenario.)

 

So, what can you do? Well, depending on how much the text in each part of the frame (both the single-column and the multi-column part) varies, you could just rework this to use two separate frames, and possibly some variation on this logic to keep them around the same size. Or you could roll your own vertical alignment by using Text Measurement to calculate the height of the entire text and inserting some space at the top. But that's getting into some complex template-building which is a bit beyond the scope of what I can do here on the forum.

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