Three Column Flow

[geeool]

Hi,

 

I need help thinking through a potential project. What I'm looking at is a directory of care providers. Each entry for a provider could have between 10 to 20 lines of data. It needs to be formatted in a three column layout (see diagram) and a provider's listing should never be split between columns.

http://dsf.baesman.com/dsf/CustomImages/TableLayout.JPG

 

Questions:

1) My thought for keeping the provider's listing intact is to create a formatted text resource and then return it using a rule. Is that a good way to approach this or is there a better way?

 

2) How do I get the data to flow from one column into the next and then into the next? Is it as simple as assigning the columns in my text frame or do I need special coding in my table rule to make that happen?

 

All insight/thoughts are appreciated.

 

Thanks

[Dan Korn]

Questions:

1) My thought for keeping the provider's listing intact is to create a formatted text resource and then return it using a rule. Is that a good way to approach this or is there a better way?

A Formatted Text Resource might help, but no, the content of the resource is not necessarily going to be kept together. Keeps are determined by the Widows and "Keep with next paragraph" settings in the Paragraph Formatting dialog. Or, you could use table cells.

2) How do I get the data to flow from one column into the next and then into the next? Is it as simple as assigning the columns in my text frame or do I need special coding in my table rule to make that happen?

Just set the text frame to have three columns. The text will automatically flow from one column to the next. You don't need to "assign" anything, and you also don't need a table for multi-column text.