Pl can someone tell me the best way to align unlinked text across two cols.
Thank you.
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Pl can someone tell me the best way to align unlinked text across two cols.
Thank you.
If you have two linked text areas then the text aligns and flows automatically.
At the bottom of the first text area, click the small arrow, drag a new text area (you can adjust the size after you draw it) and the text will align and flow into the new text area.
Hi Gary,
Yes. It isn't that. It is the fact that the text is not aligned across the columns, because I have an illustration in one column, and some call out text in another. In Quark there is a way to do this. Is there a workaround in Xara? Including anything in the text destroys the layout. Should I not embed?
Guess what? I can't find a way to do this in Xara, but I imported it into Serif Page Plus 9, which corrected the alignment...
I cannot visualise any of your described problems, so screenshots of what you achieved with Serif and what you have tried with Xara might help. Don't try and describe what you cannot do with Xara because it might be you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Artyboots
Xara doesn't have workarounds, it has different.
Acorn
Just because I am an idiot, Acorn, doesn't mean I am stupid!
If I have two text areas with the same font etc, when I introduce a graphic into one column I am not able to get the alignment back. Other progs do have a way to attach to the baseline. What am I missing?
I understand fully what you are trying to do. You can always start a new text area under the illustration and then align it to the adjacent column and even link it to the previous column. It would be helpful to have this be automatic align to baseline when you insert a graphic or even a space after a paragraph that is more than a normal paragraph space. Sadly, many of these text formatting features, which I remember back with Aldus Pagemaker, are unfamiliar to the R&D team. Xara would do well to have a former typesetter or magazine and book designer give them guidelines on how to implement these features.
I am stupid Ali, I too can't understand your problem. What Acorn suggested was perfectly correct, give us screengrabs.Quote:
Just because I am an idiot, Acorn, doesn't mean I am stupid!
I didn't call you stupid or think you are an idiot. The dumbness is in me not understanding your difficulty.Quote:
Originally Posted by Artyboots
You have introduced "unlinked text", then "an illustration in one column", and "some call out text in another".
This is trickle-feeding your problem as the problem is in the alignment failure, to what?
You mention Quark, Gary recalls Aldus, both worthies but full of features. All I was asking for is what you want.
Acorn
GARY!!!!! YES!!!! What excellent ideas. THANK YOU! I don't mind working around. But I couldn't stand to submit a brochure with misaligned columns.
You are right. It is so odd to find a DTP program without it. Makes for an amateurish finish if you can't workaround it. And yes, they need someone like us, who know the ancient wisdom (even if they can't remember the name for it!), to help them. Print is print. It needs printerly methods. I went on a course for TWO weeks just for kerning!
These arts are going to be lost.
Thank you everyone, thank you, for trying to help me here, and behind the scenes. You are the best thing of all about Xara, and I appreciate it.
Have a good evening.
Ali
Smartest thing I've read in these couple threads.Quote:
Originally Posted by Artyboots
That's because XDP, which I love for what it excels at, ain't really a DTP application. Maybe in a wannabe but never realized sense, but such things are simply not its strengths.Quote:
Originally Posted by Artyboots
I have got to that unfortunate point in this document where I can't see it any more. Everything looks wrong. Things I liked, I now hate...
Guys, what font size (in general) are you using for brochures? The client has nice branding, but the font that looks great on the web is a bit light for print. Perhaps I am just paranoid, now. It's just about readable at 12pt (Crimson Text), but that is usually giant for a brochure. What are your favourites for brochures, and what size do you use? ALL the Xara templates use 8pt. REALLY? What eyes do they have? This is a brochure for mature businesspeople. We don't want them to need an electron microscope.
Crimson has more than the regular weight. Perhaps the semi-bold would work out better?
Depends on the font re the size and weight. Also depends on how much text there is and the balance between headings, white space and illustrations. I don't mind if X text size leaves more white space. But if a given size of font at a particular weight starts crowding white space I'll begin knocking it back, often in half-point steps and see whether things improve and to what degree.
Sometimes with being given page number requirements, the amount of copy, images and/or illustrations, there can be little choice if readability suffers.
I usually print off a page or two and hang them on the wall beside my desk and don't look at the prints for a day if I have concerns. Sometimes I'll go ahead and impose and print off a copy and bind it. Then take my time and read through. But generally it's fine as designed and any changes would be nit-picking and not really make a difference.
Mike
Thank you. You are right, of course. Just gone crazy now, having had to focus too closely on this thing.
Ali, I don't believe that Acorn was trying to be anything other than helpful. I think that he honestly wanted to fully understand the issue, to be able to provide meaningful help.
Not only that, it may be an advantage to anyone who has this same problem if we could try and come up with a solution without resorting to Serif Page Plus 9, which most of the community may not possess.
And as I also cannot visualize your problem, Can you clarify what you needed to achieve?
Hello. I was joking. I wasn't remotely offended.
I managed to sort out the alignment by following Gary's advice.
However, I was ashamed to send the PDFs to the client for approval. The fonts looked terrible, no matter what export setting, and it was converting hyphens randomly to black rectangles.
Xara is fantastic. I love it so much. But it is making my life hard at the moment. It does not like doing DTP.
Have no idea why it is destroying fonts on pdf export, do you? Was going to try to flatte, but couldn't remember how. This is the first time I have had this problem.
Night night all x
Hi Ali,
An example web/xar helps us all otherwise we're merely guessing :)
There are quite a few examples online showing how baseline grids work and the important part they play in good page design. It's seems almost inconceivable that they are still missing from Xara desktop design apps. They've been requested (and ignored!) in the 'Dear Xara' for years.
Artyboots, not sure if this helps, but it is possible to create a visual baseline grid to manually keep text aligned, although I've not done this myself for real, other than this quick experiment. (see screenshot below). I suspect it will still mean a lot of fiddling about particularly when adding subheadings, although styles with the appropriate before and after paragraph spacing might be useful for those.
Anyway just a thought that might help with any alignment guesswork. I've not done any serious DTP work for years (back to the PageMaker days (Aldus PageMaker, that is!) but I have briefly played around with Scribus, an Open Source (and Free) Desktop Publishing software. And that definitely has an excellent baseline grid feature. (also see screen shot below)
Here the steps I tried:
- Style the text and spacing as desired
- Make a horizontal line grid by blending two straight lines adjusting the spacing between the lines by either stretching the blend group or by adjusting the number of steps in the blend. You can then lock this to the page or copy the Guides layer (but you'll need to convert the blend to editable shapes to see all the in-between lines)
- You can then fine tune the line spacing of your text style to fit the grid by changing the line spacing or the value of the baseline shift.
So a "baseline" is nothing more than:
As a designer producing columned copy
I want text across columns on adjacent pages to appear as if all of it had been written straight across
So that on inserting other objects or styles that repels text then the vertical alignment of the text is not displaced
Forgive me but Xara does a very good job of achieving the correct alignment when there are no repelling objects if Columns are selected.
Equally, the addition of a Shape, image or Text Box, with So a "baseline" is nothing more than:
As a designer producing columned copy
I want text across columns on adjacent pages to appear as if all of it had been written straight across
So that on inserting other objects or styles that repels text then the vertical alignment of the text is not displaced
Forgive me but Xara does a very good job of achieving the correct alignment when there are no repelling objects if Columns are selected.
Equally, the addition of a Shape, image or Text Box, with Repel text under all seems to understand the concept of a "baseline"; if not, the repelling dimensions can be adjusted.
The areas where things go awry are in Paragraph & Character styles and embedded graphics.
For Paragraph styles, it is is a simple operation to apply a suitable Baseline Shift.
If a heading runs over two lines that the line spacing or another style might be required.
The principle here is not to adjust the underlying text but make the style fit as Jonopen describes.
A Character style, say a Drop Capital, effectively upsets the remainder of the column or until a paragraph is affected by a similar change.
I cannot comment on Embedded Objects as I have found a Xara bug in XDPXv15.1 that prevents me checking further.
For the limited printing press work I have done as a hobby setting up a page of lead is far harder.
Attachment 121370
If I have missed any complexity, I apologise but sticking one's head over the parapet invariably means there's someone out there taking aim.
The OP asked for workarounds so let's better what I have proposed.
Acorn
Attachment 121369
Your text isn't aligned across those columns, Acorn. But then, I don't know whether you desired to illustrate Xara's inability to do so without faffing about or believe it is.
It can be done. It's also a right pita to do so with anything except a basic book style layout.
Even in something meant to do layout, a grid is not an absolute necessity to accomplish this. A grid is just a tool. I use baseline grids in perhaps 1/2 or more of the books I do (and the newspapers I've set up), but if the text is simple enough, the styles can be created so as to compensate for a no-grid layout and that's what I'll use (or not use depending on how one looks at it).
Mike
Mike, appreciate your comments; I was throwing something out there to get a response and to propose a couple of workarounds.Quote:
Originally Posted by mwenz
Yes, it is a PITA, so by showing where Xara is fails might give it the right stimulus.
I strive for good enough and a workflow that can be redone without tons of effort.
When proper baselining appears, I can then throw it all away knowing I having just been waiting.
The closest example I can think of is Tables; Xara has dithered for years so I have alternatives/workarounds that just about work but these at least have rock-solid examples of where I can show Xara where it is well off the mark.
I am knowingly ignorant of DTP best practice but 'baselining - doesn't work' wasn't a good starting point for me and, I suspect, Xara.
Acorn
Hi Acorn,
I downloaded and modified your fishy example. Attached here.
Mike
Mike, I rechecked what I had published to find it wasn't the one I intended.Quote:
Originally Posted by mwenz
Your corrections, however, are far better than I had hoped to achieve.
My main premise is, if you design the blobs right, then the re-positioning of them does not affect the alignment.
When the Heading 1 is over two lines then moving it and the other shapes still keeps everything sane.
Most grateful,
Acorn
XDP, or rather Xara, doesn't make this easy but it is doable.
The main issue to me is the way text styles are implemented. All the properties should be broke out separately and likely in a gallery. The context toolbar is fine for tweaking but makes it more difficult than it should be and the result is more a flying by the seat of the pants approach. This makes consistency difficult when different styles are involved within the same text frame.
As well, there should be a setting for text for text to always be in points and that includes leading. For print intended documents anyway. Using percentage as a default for leading is basically for Word compatibility. But leading rarely should be set to percent.
Anyway, you're welcome.
Had to take a phone call before I was finished...
Before an "advanced" feature such as baseline grids (which there should be two kinds, page and text frame, which can/should be able to be different), I think the better things to add to XDP, which would be of benefit to both print & web, would be master pages, column guides, the break out of styles so they are clear and have listed all text properties incl. OT Features, running headers' foother, footnotes, etc.
Baseline grids are a great feature, but there should be in my not so humble opinion other things first.
When I get in publishing work, I can fully layout and produce the pdfs for two novel-types of books per day as long as the (typically) Word files are reasonably clean. That drops to 1 1/2 per day if I have much mucking around in Word. I don't expect an Xara application to be performant in that manner. It's not what Xara applications are about and never will be. But Xara could make it easier for those laying out everything from brochures & smaller to larger publications.
Mike, Just wanted to clarify that I wasn't suggesting that a baseline grid feature should take wish list precedence over other improvements like style management or anything else you mentioned. I fully respect your experience and knowledge with anything like this. I just felt the frustration of the OP's problem and wanted to try and help by thinking how I might go about tackling things. Cheers, Jono
No worries, Jono...I wasn't pointing a finger at anyone (well, maybe Xara...).
Even though a very careful use of styles and their settings, ensuring independent text frames are aligned, etc., can alleviate the issue(s), I would like to see baseline grids in XDP because I believe it would aid in getting from A-Z quicker for those that use XDP for such things. It just takes more time than should be necessary to achieve what I did in my example (which can still break alignment in circumstances).
It is a good request in the pile of requests.
Smartest thing I've read in these couple threads.Quote:
Originally Posted by mwenz
Edit: but it should be and it could have been :(