"Space before" at the top of a page

ChoccieMuffin · Post by **ChoccieMuffin** » Sun Jul 04, 2010 11:20 pm

I have several styles, headings in particular, that have "space before" attributes, to keep things looking pretty. However, I notice that if that heading appears at the top of a page, the space before means that instead of it appearing actually at the top, the space is included, so it is shoved down the page a bit. While that's fine for a single page, it looks a bit odd if you flick through the printed book.

Is there any setting I can adjust so that a heading 2 (for example) which has a space before of 10 pts if it appears in the middle of a page suppresses that space before if it appears at the top of a page?

Your views and contributions very welcome.

Post by **RamonS** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 4:20 am

One way that surely will work is creating another style, but that makes only sense when you can determine beforehand which heading will end up at the top of a page.

ChoccieMuffin · Post by **ChoccieMuffin** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 5:33 am

RamonS wrote:One way that surely will work is creating another style, but that makes only sense when you can determine beforehand which heading will end up at the top of a page.

Hmm... that's not that much further than deciding to carve the whole thing in a block of stone in best caveman stylee!

So I think I might just have to live with it.

Does every topic have to have <head> and </head> in it? Seems like all of mine do, and that's where the link to the style sheet goes, but if you remove those classes, the page jumps back up to the top of the page. Very odd.

[disclaimer] Yes, I appreciate that I might have asked a very silly question! [/disclaimer]

Post by **LTinker68** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 10:17 am

ChoccieMuffin wrote:Does every topic have to have <head> and </head> in it? Seems like all of mine do, and that's where the link to the style sheet goes, but if you remove those classes, the page jumps back up to the top of the page. Very odd.

Yes, each topic needs the head tag. And removing the stylesheet link works because you just changed it back to using the default tag style which is to have no spacing before it.

Yes, it's a pain to have a separate class for those instances where you want a heading to not have the space before. It means you have to build the output to see where the headings falls in the print output then go back and apply the second class to the appropriate headings.

You can submit a feature request at http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx asking for an option you can check in the target, probably, that if checked will automatically change an <h1> tag to an <h1 class="noMargin">, for example, if the h1 tag is the top of a page. It seems like it wouldn't be all that different from what Flare does now when you have the "use TOC depth" option enabled, so it certainly seems doable. And I'd definitely use it.

ChoccieMuffin · Post by **ChoccieMuffin** » Tue Jul 06, 2010 12:56 am

There are some topics that don't actually have anything in between the <head> and </head> tags - should they? I admit I've done a lot of messing around with the content of my project trying to get it to behave. Should they all have reference to the style sheets?

(By "messing around" I mean cutting and pasting content from the XML window into new topics, not too much ferreting around in the html code...)

Post by **Andrew** » Tue Jul 06, 2010 6:39 am

ChoccieMuffin wrote:Does every topic have to have <head> and </head> in it? Seems like all of mine do, and that's where the link to the style sheet goes, but if you remove those classes, the page jumps back up to the top of the page. Very odd.

[disclaimer] Yes, I appreciate that I might have asked a very silly question! [/disclaimer]

I don't think that's a silly question. No, xhtml does not require the <head></head> tags, and neither does Flare, to my knowledge. If you remove it, I believe Flare will automatically add it in the output with the default values, such as the default stylesheet link, as well as the default topic title (which is the first h1, h2, h3, etc. in your topic). Given that, though, if you need something other than default values there, the topic needs to have it specified.

Post by **LTinker68** » Tue Jul 06, 2010 8:03 am

Not having <head></head> tags might throw an XML error, but I'm not positive. Chances are good you won't see anything between the tags in the authoring environment but when building online output, Flare will automatically throw in some info in between those tags, include references to MadCap.css and your topic stylesheet, references to JavaScript files, and so on. So if you're modifying the topic in the Internal Text Editor or Notepad or something similar, then the only thing you should be adding to it are references to custom script files that you created, because all other references will be added automatically at build time.

forfear · Post by **forfear** » Mon Jul 12, 2010 5:15 pm

ChoccieMuffin wrote:I have several styles, headings in particular, that have "space before" attributes, to keep things looking pretty. However, I notice that if that heading appears at the top of a page, the space before means that instead of it appearing actually at the top, the space is included, so it is shoved down the page a bit. While that's fine for a single page, it looks a bit odd if you flick through the printed book.

Is there any setting I can adjust so that a heading 2 (for example) which has a space before of 10 pts if it appears in the middle of a page suppresses that space before if it appears at the top of a page?

Your views and contributions very welcome.

DO sumit your bug/feature requests to tech support on this. As it stands, this has been a recurring request. This is most apparent when you view pages in 'spreads' or in 2 column page layouts. See indexes, multi-column TOC layouts, glossaries, etc

In one version
The very first version of Flare v4.0 actually avoided this behaviour. Something changed along the way to Flare v4.2. This occurred because the page layout rules were adjusted after, IMHO, a fix was put in to correct odd placement of text when the same rules were applied to text in header and footer frame types. (see the correct implementation on how to fix for this)

When space-before rules should be ignored or obeyed

Space before attributes for headings or paragraphs, should be ignored (flow to the very top of a column or page frame), ignoring margin-top or padding-top if it is
- only apply if text starts at the TOP of a content frame or column.
- resulting from an automatic overflow of text from the previous page or previous column
- resulting from from an overflow of text caused by orphan/widow settings from the previous page or column
- start of a new page type (left,right, first etc)
- APPLY ONLY if its in the Body frame flow (page layout) type (this is important because if you don't have this attribute to distinguish text that occurs in headers and footer. If not you'll have issues of 'jumping/misplaced' text in headers/footers between pages spreads. These frame types are places where any space applied to paragraphs you want to be respected always or ignored consistently. ---As a result of the fix that was incorporated after some vocal feedback on a page layout bug. See release notes for Flare 4.1 and up.

Space before attributes for headings or paragraphs, should be respected if it is
- start of a new chapter break
- resulting from flow of text that DOES NOT start at the top of a body frame.
- NOT in the body frame content type...that means apply space before to all other page content frames like header, footer, decoration in a page layout.

What you should expect
If this fix is incorporated in a future version of MadCap Flare/Blaze's page layout engine, and if you do submit your bug request on this, you will be able to
- incorporate multi-column layouts consistently
- incorporate more typographically balanced one-page layouts
- create more visually balanced space and chunking between paragraphs and headings
resulting in a more
-pleasing
-consistent,
-intelligent,
page flow rule expression.

ChoccieMuffin · Post by **ChoccieMuffin** » Mon Jul 12, 2010 5:50 pm

Feature request submitted - and very handily given the link in your footer, forfear - I like your style!

The more I work with this package, the more I dislike it. It's really too late to go back to something I can enjoy working with for the particular project, and I live in the (I suspect futile) hope that I'll grow to tolerate, if not love, Flare. But that learning cliff is just so tough to cope with and these last few months have been a learning experience on so many levels, not least of personal willpower not to just throw in the towel and make myself unemployed again.

Getting back from the personal angst vein, as a fix to this particular headache (among so many) I am relying on the "space after" attributes that I have applied to preceding paragraphs to keep things looking acceptable, but I wouldn't be surprised if that "space after" comes with similar problems such as paragraphs not fitting tidily onto a single page because of the attributes. But I really don't have the heart - or time - to investigate, so I'll just live with it for now. Ho hum, the joys of Flare.

forfear · Post by **forfear** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 7:58 am

ChoccieMuffin wrote: The more I work with this package, the more I dislike it. It's really too late to go back to something I can enjoy working with for the particular project, and I live in the (I suspect futile) hope that I'll grow to tolerate, if not love, Flare. But that learning cliff is just so tough to cope with and these last few months have been a learning experience on so many levels, not least of personal willpower not to just throw in the towel and make myself unemployed again.

Getting back from the personal angst vein, as a fix to this particular headache (among so many) I am relying on the "space after" attributes that I have applied to preceding paragraphs to keep things looking acceptable, but I wouldn't be surprised if that "space after" comes with similar problems such as paragraphs not fitting tidily onto a single page because of the attributes. But I really don't have the heart - or time - to investigate, so I'll just live with it for now. Ho hum, the joys of Flare.

Thank you!
Give yourself and Flare some time. Keep working on projects with Flare. And use the community forums if you do face any annoying roadblocks. And if there isn't something not working quite right, even after the forums have come together, post a bug fix or enhancement request. There is a vocal community and a fairly proactive support and development team supporting Flare. Flare isn't trying to be a word processing suite, but it'll be great when the two workflows blend together
even more seamlessly. Its an XML-based help authoring tool

I am really, really, really hoping this space-before thing gets its dues in a 6.2 release instead of a 7.0 release.

Ease the pain
To lower the learning curve a bit and get through this topic oriented type of authoring workflow,
Not sure what your level of experience is with help authoring and XML authoring tools...is but you are doing well..

See if the following helps....
Use the structure bars. Use it regularly to reorganize sections and move whole sections of topics and lists around. Use the structure bars frequently to do it, and you'll appreciate how it works in Flare. Flare makes authors use structure bars and less of the copy/paste method to move things around to ensure that things can be moved around, while ensuring that any XML markup or structural rules are still obeyed. You get to do this so that you don't have to go through unexpected rings of fire, copying the wrong markup tags, or adding visual noise complexity the interface to make sure you know what you're moving. It is growing to be more of a structured authoring environment. If you've tried moving things around in other XML-based WYSIWYG editors, you might know what I mean.

Look at some of the pre-recorded Tech Support videos on working
- with Complex Lists,
- Working with Tables.
- Stylesheets

Once you've gotten those basics to get a topic authoring workflow together, and continue working on projects, and taking some time off in between...its a good start...and you'll be doing well in no time churning out rteusable 1000 topic information development projects.

ChoccieMuffin · Post by **ChoccieMuffin** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 8:28 am

I've been using structure bars quite a lot, but I do still have to pop into the text editor to make changes because I can't figure out how to do stuff, for example, in the middle of a list I might want a paragraph that doesn't have a number.

1. Do this action.
This is the result of doing the action, on a separate line but indented like the list.
2. Do the next action.

I have yet to figure out how to make that middle paragraph a <p> rather than just another <li>, so I type:

1. Do this action.
2.This is the result of doing the action, on a separate line but indented like the list.
3. Do the next action.

and then go into the text editor and change the <li> and </li> tags around the middle paragraph to <p> and </p> (with the required classes) which results in what I want. But it's a faff and takes too much time, particularly if I have several lists of instructions which include feedback statements.

Am experimenting to try to find the keyboard shortcuts though, which helps (e.g. "Alt-O, C" to bring up the conditions dialog, and "Alt-I, O" to insert a cross-ref.)

Post by **LTinker68** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 8:38 am

ChoccieMuffin wrote:1. Do this action.
This is the result of doing the action, on a separate line but indented like the list.
2. Do the next action.

It's easy enough to do. I usually type the step 1 and step 2 of your example first, then I go back and put my cursor at the end of step 1. A few icons to the right of the list icon is the List Actions icon. If you click the drop-down for that menu, one of the options is "Make Paragraph Items". When you click that, you'll see the code block for the list change to include a paragraph tag inside the li tags for line item 1. You then press the Enter key to insert a second paragraph within that line item and type its text or insert a graphic, whatever. Press Enter again to get another paragraph, if you want. I do this to have instructions followed by a screenshot followed by a caption, all of which are inside their own paragraph tags inside a parent line item tag.

So the resulting code block of your example will look like:

Code: Select all

<ol>
<li><p> Do this action.</p>
<p>This is the result of doing the action, on a separate line but indented like the list.</p></li>
<li> Do the next action.</li>
</ol>

The paragraph will be indented to line up with the text of line item 1. I usually start typing the following line item before inserting the paragraphs because it's easier to get out of the paragraph mode that way, but if you forget to do that, you can get out of paragraph mode by inserting a new paragraph then going back to List Actions and selecting "Make Simple Items". That turns that paragraph into a line item.

forfear · Post by **forfear** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 8:41 am

ChoccieMuffin wrote:I've been using structure bars quite a lot, but I do still have to pop into the text editor to make changes because I can't figure out how to do stuff, for example, in the middle of a list I might want a paragraph that doesn't have a number.

1. Do this action.
This is the result of doing the action, on a separate line but indented like the list.
2. Do the next action.

I have yet to figure out how to make that middle paragraph a <p> rather than just another <li>, so I type:

Yes there is a way to do it correctly in Flare without touching code...ever.

I used to use it as you do as well.
See the link below.. The support section of the Madcapsoftware.com website has 4-5 videos(pre-recorded demos) that you really don't wanna miss and will save you some time. Its pretty much answers and 'aha' moments for some of the most common issues new users have in the beginning. do give it a shot.

http://www.madcapsoftware.com/demos/pla ... d0d&f=sgtm

ChoccieMuffin · Post by **ChoccieMuffin** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 9:10 am

Thank you both, yet again. I expect there will be lightbulbs appearing all over the top of my head now!

slindskov · Post by **slindskov** » Wed Sep 21, 2011 8:12 am

Does anyone know if this bug/feature request went into Flare? If so, do you know where the fix went in? Where would I look for it?

Thanks,
Shari

MadCap Software Forums

"Space before" at the top of a page

"Space before" at the top of a page

Re: "Space before" at the top of a page

Re: "Space before" at the top of a page

Re: "Space before" at the top of a page

Re: "Space before" at the top of a page

Re: "Space before" at the top of a page

Re: "Space before" at the top of a page

Re: "Space before" at the top of a page

Re: "Space before" at the top of a page

Re: "Space before" at the top of a page

Re: "Space before" at the top of a page

Re: "Space before" at the top of a page

Re: "Space before" at the top of a page

Re: "Space before" at the top of a page

Re: "Space before" at the top of a page