Column layout

[helseykc]

Hello,

I am not sure if what I'm doing is possible but I'm sure it should be! I am creating a datasheet and want a three framed output. In the first frame I want the title of the page, spanning the whole page. In the left-hand frame I want a miniTOC and in the right hand frame I want the main content. Is this possible?

I've tried to do this using a pagelayout, with the miniTOC floating (using mc-float) outside of the main content frame. This looks fine until I view output and the miniTOC just appears before the main content frame, and the main content frame isn't over to the right where the page layout specifies.

Is there a better way to do this anyway? I think I'm a bit stumped really!

Thanks in advance for any tips!

Helen

[lacastle]

What output are you making?
For webhelp, you need to use a MasterPage, not a PageLayout. PageLayout is for print output.

Why is the regular webhelp frame format not working? it uses 3 frames - one for top row (you can put text here instead of icons if you want), one for TOC, and one for main content.

[LTinker68]

I think she's talking about print output.

Helen, there are a couple of ways to do this, but it depends on if you're doing just print output, or if you want to single source and use the same content for online and print outputs. So which output type(s) do you want to use with this content?

[helseykc]

I'm generating print output. I want to create a "datasheet" so I want the main content in a frame over to the right, and I'd like either headings (at simplest) or a mini toc on the left hand side of that. I don't seem to be able to have two columns/frames which break when I want them to. I have tried making the main content a two-columned frame but these are equal size and not what I'm after. It's difficult to describe without a drawing! Ah, I can attach a drawing which illustrates what I'm hoping to achieve!

datasheet.jpg

[LTinker68]

I don't seem to be able to have two columns/frames which break when I want them to.

In the page layout you set the body frame to have columns, then when you're writing the content in the topic, you manually insert a column break. To do that, you can create a generic class or a <p> class that has the column-break-before set to always, then you apply that class to the first paragraph that's supposed to go in the second column.

The problem will be the page title. If that changes from page to page then I'm not sure what you can do. Unless it's changed in v7, Flare only allows for columns in the body frame that go from the top of the frame to the bottom -- you can't tell it to start the columns partway down the page, so your page title would be constrained to the left column, which you don't want. If the page title is the same on every page, then you can just add that text to a frame in the page layout, so you're basically hard-coding it into your page layout.

The only other option is to not use columns in the page layout but to instead use tables in the topic to control the positioning of the content.

[ajturnersurrey]

I do something like this with my datasheets:

My layout has 2 body areas (OK for pdf, not for Word), the first single-column part sized for a header and the second two column body for my tables

datasheet_layout.jpg

My topics look like this:

datasheet_topic.jpg

And the resulting datasheet like this:

datasheet.jpg

So it is possible. My only niggle was that there is no syntax to force something to start in the next body area - that would be an improvement. And I just have to watch out that I am not creating headers that would wrap to two lines, otherwise my header will decide it doesn't fit in body 1 so start in body 2, using up my 2 column space!