Working with side head spans and paragraph formats with graphics.

[Jen A.]

I've done a pretty thorough search for a solution to my problem, and haven't found anything yet. Hopefully someone here can help.

Here's my situation: I'm creating a template for a user's guide, which will end up as a printed book.

I've set up my book with a main text flow, along with a side head that appears on the side of the page farthest from the binding. Specifically, the book is 7" wide by 9" high, so on a left hand page there would be an indent of 0.5", then the side head is 1.4" wide, there's a 0.125" gap between the side head and the main text flow, the main text flow is 4.475" wide, and then there's another 0.5" margin to the binding. Same thing for the right hand pages, only reversed.

My first-level headings are formatted using the paragraph format "Header1", I've created a 2pt horizontal line graphic and placed it on the appropriate Reference page. Using the Paragraph Designer for Header1, I specified this graphic in the Frame Above Pgf field, and set Pagination > Format to Across All Columns and Side Heads. The graphic shows up just fine, but my problem is thus:

I would like the 2 pt line to extend from the margin closest to the binding outward, ending halfway through the side head area. I've made the graphic the appropriate size, 5.3" long, but the alignment isn't working out properly.

No matter what I use for the setting Basic > Alignment in Paragraph Designer, the line starts at the extreme left margin on both right and left facing pages and continues across the page. The Alignment only determines where the text for Header1 begins, not the graphic associated with it. This means on the left side page, it spans the entire side head and doesn't make it completely across the main text flow, while on the right side page it looks correct because it starts at the left margin of the text flow.

I'd really like to find a solution that allows me to attach this graphic to a paragraph format, rather than having to use a workaround that involves making anchored frames and using the line as a boilerplate graphic, etc. Is there some way that I can align the graphic properly to make it look right regardless of what page it's on?

On a related note, my Heading1 text would work best if I could have it appear left-aligned on a left facing page and right-aligned on a right facing page, so essentially the Header1 text would extend halfway into the side head at all times. Is there a way I can set the paragraph format to detect which facing page it appears on and align it accordingly? I thought about making two separate paragraph formats, one for the left page and one for the right, but this could be a nightmare if something is changed in the book and the pagination isn't the same as it was when the headings were originally set up.

Thanks in advance for your assistance! Please help me stop pulling out my hair, I've been wrangling with this issue for a couple of days now and I feel like a loser when someone asks me what progress I'm making and I have only a single header to show for it.
- Jen

[Ian Burton]

Hello Jen,
I think you have two choices:
1. Learn to live without hair
2. Convince the designer who produced this idea to put readability before fancy formatting and make left and right pages the same rather than mirror images.

I don't believe there's a convenient way to automatically detect if a para falls on a right page or a left page, and then modify para formating accordingly.

FM can do this with anchored frames set to side furthest from binding, but I don't see how you could get the insertion of the anchored frame with a line in it to happen automatically with every Heading1. Even if you managed to insert an anchored frame (side furthest from binding) as a writer process before every heading1, then keep this with the following heading1, the heading1 para itself would still look odd because it would aways be on the same side regardless of left or right page.

Just keep your hair, and put Heading1 paras with a line always with the same position regardless of left and right pages. I still think mirrored side head areas might puzzle the reader a little.
FWIW
Ian

[Jen A.]

Hi Ian!

Thanks for your quick response. What you said is pretty much what I thought, but it helps to confirm that there wasn't some magical solution out there that I missed.

I happen to like my hair, so I think I'll just tell the designer that we can either have a line that goes all the way across both the text frame and the side head, or just the text frame.

I'll also point out that while technically possible, it's a potential nightmare to make two different paragraph formats to align the first level headings on either side of the page.

It's funny, I looked at a number of manuals to see how they went about it, and I found that in the Complete Reference to FM7 the graphics above first-level headings appear the same whether they're on the left or right facing page. I think the graphics they used are ugly (a big box on the left-hand side with a line extending away from it to the right), but apparently they couldn't figure out how to do it, either. That's a consolation, at the very least.

- Jen

[Jen A.]

I just figured out a workaround I figured I would share, it was like a light bulb went on all of a sudden.

On my Reference page, I took the 2pt line graphic I made and put another 2pt line attached to the left side, only I set the tint to 0% so it appears transparent.

In this way, FrameMaker displays the entire graphic from the left margin onward, but to the user the first half of the side head appears blank.

Fortunately for me, I convinced the designer to make all the pages one format, so there's none of that wacky left facing pages mirror right facing pages stuff any more.

* happy dance*

- Jen