Understanding and Creating FrameMaker Templates - Paragraph Formats
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A paragraph format contains settings for how the text looks and how it fits with other things on the page. Paragraph formats are created with the Paragraph Designer, which is opened by clicking
Format>Paragraphs>Designer.
Paragraph formats are the basis of document formatting in unstructured FrameMaker documents. Paragraph formats can also be the basis of document formatting in structured FrameMaker documents. The template setup described in this chapter assumes that the paragraph formats will be used with structured documents.
NOTE You will learn in Chapter 10 that formatting structured FrameMaker documents can be done several ways. Formatting via paragraph formats is usually considered to be the most effective means of formatting by the author, since it lends itself better to single sourcing and exporting to formats like Microsoft Word. |
The paragraph designer consists of six sheets of properties. The first is the Basic properties sheet, shown in Figure 3–1.
As you can see, Basic properties affect things like spacing and indents. This gives you control over how your paragraphs fit along the page margins and from line to line. Also on this sheet is Space Above Pgf (paragraph) and Space Below Pgf, which let you put padding between paragraphs. These particular settings, used properly, avoid empty returns on the page to adjust spacing. All spacing is consistently inserted as needed.
The second property sheet is labeled Default Font, as shown in Figure 3–2.
Figure 3–1. The Paragraph Designer Basic properties sheet is one of six.
Figure 3–2. Paragraph Designer Default Font properties sheet is displayed.
Default Font settings affect the appearance of your text. Some of these warrant extra explanation.
- Spread This allows you to adjust the spacing between words and characters. If you type a negative value for the Spread, the characters in the paragraph will move closer together. If you type a positive value, extra spacing is added between the characters.
- Stretch By replacing the 100% with a greater percentage value (for example, 110%), you can stretch the characters ( a, b, c, etc.) to make them wider. Replacing with a lesser percentage value (for example, 75%) would make the characters thinner.
NOTE Because Stretch manipulates the font, it can cause problems with search-ability in any resulting PDF documents. It is suggested that you use this setting sparingly. |
- Language This selection affects the Spell Check dictionary used on the text. Changing this to None for any paragraph format means that text using that format cannot be spell checked. This can save you time by letting you bypass code, for example, during a spell check.
NOTE You can still use Find/Change to find content in a paragraph with language set to None. In fact, there does not seem to be a way to keep language-free text out of the Find stream. |
- Numeric Underline (instead of Underline) Creates an underline on the text that adjusts based on the font size, which makes the underlining look a bit better than with the Underline setting.
 This chapter is from XML and FrameMaker, by Kay Ethier (Apress, 2004, ISBN: 159059276X). Check it out at your favorite bookstore today. Buy this book now.
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