Hi,
I'm fed up with MS Word 2007 crashing on me and want to move to Framemaker. I'm a bit lost as to whether you can create a paragraph design which will give you a page width, colour filled "box" in which to type, i.e. blue filled box with white text. Can anyone help on this? Our corporate styles need this as a main heading.
I can create it in MS Word 2007, but can't figure out how to do it in Framemaker 8. I've tried a reference graphic frame, but you only appear to have the choice to put the frame above or below the text ... I want the text inside it :-)
Thanks!

The easiest way to do it would be to create a single cell table. I'd hang it from a special Anchor tag that you only use to place the (or all tables) to separate it appropriately from other text.
But the blue fill and size are easy to set for the table itself; the white font color comes from the paragraph tag (Heading1 / H1 / whatever) that you place in the cell.

Art

I think you'd have to use a 1 row, 1 column table to do this.

--
Kenneth Benson
Pegasus Type, Inc.
www.pegtype.com

Hi,

Thanks for the advice :-)

I thought a table might be the only way ... however, my next question is can I place this on a "quick" button or something so that it's easy for people to use? Of course the other question is whether it could be included in a TOC if it's a table?

Thanks again!

There isn't a way within FM to insert the entire assembly with a keystroke. But, you could:

* use an aftermarket keystroke recorder / macro recorder to play back the correct string to build it. A lot of people swear by Autotext; some people swear at it.

* I store stuff like this in Clipbook (which I love), but it's not a playback engine, it's a clipboard manager.

* put the table by itself in a file and then copy it in when you need it.

* put it on a Reference page, so it's always accessible and can be copied in easily.

And yes the Heading1-in-a-table should pop in a TOC. There are ways to break it using this method if you try to get overly cute with nested text frames and stuff, but if you follow the KISS principle, it should work.

Art

Sian,

Another way to do this without resorting to a table structure is to
use two paragraph styles in concert.

The first paratag (e.g. H1_bkgrnd) would contain the graphic reference
frame (set to Above - so you won't have gaps when starting at the top
of a page) to get your background graphic area. Setting the height of
the background colour to about twice the heading font size is a good
starting point. This paratag also should have the "Next Pgf Tag"
setting set to the paratag that is formatted for the actual heading
text (e.g. H1).

You then need to set the H1_bkgrnd paratag to have a Below Pgf
negative line spacing approximately to 1.5x the height of the
background box (or font size) and a Line Spacing of "0". Then set the
Above Pgf spacing for the H1 tag to be the same negative value as for
the background tags below setting.

What this will do is move the H1 paragraph back up over top of the
background reference graphic frame. You may have to play with the
below/above values to get things vertically centred the way you want
it.

Then to use it, simply insert the H1_bkgrnd tag, hit the enter key,
type your heading text and hit enter again.

Quite simple and automatic once it's implemented. An additional
benefit is that the headings will never get out of order in a
generated list as they might when tables are used (FM scans the main
flow first and then each table on a page when creating TOCs). Tables
also use up more resources in FM, but these days, this isn't as big an
issue as it was a decade or so ago.

For two-line headings, you need to create additional paratags that
have a larger vertical dimension for a two-line graphic reference
frame and heading (the space above/below will be different for the
pair so you need additional tags, e.g. H1_bkgrnd_2line & H1_2line).

It sounds a bit more complicated than creating the table, but it's
actually easier for the user to insert once your template has been
properly created for these style pairs.

> Then to use it, simply insert the H1_bkgrnd tag, hit the enter key,
> type your heading text and hit enter again.

One thing to be aware of, unless things have changed in FM 8,
is that the display will flicker when you enter the heading text,
making it somewhat difficult to see exactly what you're typing.
But this is only a visual side-effect of this special para design.

--
/Thomas Michanek

Ctrl + L should be pretty much an automatic reaction for most FM
users. ;-)