Mixed alignment in footer

[marisoul]

Hi,
I would like to create a footer in my topic containing only one sentence. Part of this sentence (project name) should be left aligned whereas the page number should be right aligned. How can I make this happen? My target is Word.
Thanks,
Marisoul

[LTinker68]

Insert a two-cell table in your footer and split the text that way.

[7man40]

I have two questions on this:

1. How do you insert a table in a footer? I tried copying and pasting the HTML from a footer that had a table, but it wasn't real text and would not paste.

2. It appears that both cells, left and right, contain text that is left-aligned. How do I right-align the right cell? Inline CSS styles do not seem to work.

[Msquared]

I'm not on my PC at present, but you insert a table in the footer (once you have opened it for edit) in just the same way as you would insert in in a topic. Probably Tables > Insert?

I always use predefined styles, not inline styles, even for apparently one-off things like header and footer styles. Sooner or later you may need to change them all, and it will be that little bit easier. Those styles can certainly be applied to table entries. I have a header-footer left justified, a header-footer centered and a header-footer right style.

A tip when editing frames in the page layout. You can float the window and dock it in the main body where you edit topics. That doesn't give you all the topic editing facilities, like the text/XML editor switch, but it does make it easier to see what you are doing as the windows is bigger.

Post back if you need more detailed instructions.

[7man40]

Thanks for your help Marjorie! Thanks for the tip about docking the footer editor.

[...] you insert a table in the footer (once you have opened it for edit) in just the same way as you would insert in in a topic. Probably Tables > Insert?

You were right, I finally looked up and saw a tab called Table and I figured it out from there. To my surprise I found I could use it to create a table in the footer editor (I usually work in raw HTML, copying and pasting an existing table). I'm the kind of person who always ignores big ribbons full of icons, so the Table tab was about my 6th choice. Since the footer editor appears to show you the underlying HTML code, my first choice was to edit the HTML directly, because I'm quite comfortable with that and raw CSS code. You can do that in the main Flare editor, so I assumed I could do the same in the footer, but no.

I always use predefined styles, not inline styles, even for apparently one-off things like header and footer styles. Sooner or later you may need to change them all, and it will be that little bit easier. Those styles can certainly be applied to table entries. I have a header-footer left justified, a header-footer centered and a header-footer right style.

You are totally right about predefined styles Marjorie and I agree. But I could not figure out what CSS the footer was using, so I could not edit it.

I got the footer looking okay by digging around in dialog boxes and config pages, and dragging the column widths to move the text, but now I'd like to do the following:

1. Can you point me to the CSS files that are used by the footer? (This would probably fix the two following items.)

2. In the footer, make the text in the left cell (page number) flush left, and make the text in the right cell (name of manual) flush right.

3. Remove all padding or margins from the table cells so the text goes all the way to one side or another, so the text is right at the edge of the column.

Thanks,
Mark

[Msquared]

The CSS files used by the page layout file will be the same as the CSS file used by the topic that is placed inside the page layout file, so far as I know. So, that's probably the stylesheet (and medium, if applicable) used by your target, unless you've set a specific style sheet for your topic. I don't do anything fancy like that, so my header/footer styles are in the stylesheet used by my target (I have several for different targets, as I single-source for two different brandings). It all works exactly as you'd expect.

[SusanSuzySue]

I accomplished something similar using a simple two column table with the appropriate justification.

[7man40]

Here are the answers to my 3 questions above, and a summary of important things I learned:

1. Can you point me to the CSS files that are used by the footer? (This would probably fix the two following items.)

The header/footer editor uses the project's main CSS file. You can access the CSS classes for it from the ribbon in the Home tab, Styles drop-down.

2. In the footer, make the text in the left cell (page number) flush left, and make the text in the right cell (name of manual) flush right.

I found that I could simply use the alignment icons on the Home tab on the toolbar. Flush left for the left cell, flush right for the right cell. But I prefer to do this with CSS so I figured that out, see 3 below.

3. Remove all padding or margins from the table cells so the text goes all the way to one side or another, so the text is right at the edge of the column.

I messed with the CSS to remove all padding and borders from the table in the footer. At the same time I made the text flush left and flush right in the left and right table cells (<td>), so I didn't have to do override formatting in the ribbon as described under 2 above. The CSS for my footer table is shown below. I applied these classes by selecting them from the ribbon in the Home tab, Styles drop-down.

Code: Select all

/* table in Flare footer editor to get flush left and flush right text */
table.footer
{
    border: none;
}

td.footerleft
{
    padding: 0px;
    text-align: left;
    font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
    font-size: 8pt;
}

td.footerright
{
    padding: 0px;
    text-align: right;
    font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
    font-size: 8pt;
}

Here is a summary of important things I learned:

- I thought all you could do in the header/footer editor was use its "local toolbar," but you can also use the ribbon icons up above (in the Home and Table tabs at least). Believe it or not, this was one of the last things I expected.

- You can't edit the "HTML" in the header/footer editor the way you edit the real HTML in the main Flare XML editor. This "HTML" does not do anything useful that I could see.

- The text in the footer editor uses the project's main CSS file. You can access the CSS classes for it from the ribbon editor in the Home tab, Styles drop-down.

Thanks for everyone's help.
Mark

[dorcutt]

Just a quick note from one beginner to another:

You might want to also check out TableStyles. They seem to be the "best practice" way to format tables from what I can gather, though the simple footer table probably doesn't require it. The in-Flare editor is a bit tricky (it sizes its windows really weird for starters which is confusing) but it seems to be a super powerful tool that is worth checking out.

Thanks for taking the time to post your results, btw!

[7man40]

Thanks for the tip on table styles dorcutt. I came to Flare with a long background in editing raw CSS and doing programming, so the idea of having a separate CSS file and a separate editor for table CSS made no sense to me and I didn't spend any time learning a new way to do the same thing. But maybe a normal Flare user would appreciate it.

The same was true of the internal Flare CSS editor. But to be fair, I had to use the internal Flare CSS editor a couple times and after I figured out how it worked, I found it convenient because it lists out a full set of options for each CSS class and I didn't have to get out my CSS references. And for the many proprietary Flare CSS classes like MadCap|miniTocProxy and mc-hyphenate, it's pretty much required to use the internal editor.

I've actually been using Flare for many years, but mainly to integrate it into other XML-based documentation systems. So I'm pretty familiar with the underlying plumbing and what I can get away with, but not so much the flashy public UI. But at the very least I ought to have a bigger propeller in this forum!

[lise]

When mirroring a page layout for print, is there any way to apply that mirror effect to a footer that consists of a 2-column table?

Like many here I want some text justified left and some justified right in my footer, so I created a table for it directly in the footer of my Right page.
But when I mirror my page layout to create the Left page the table's columns don't get switched around.

[Nita Beck]

When mirroring a page layout for print, is there any way to apply that mirror effect to a footer that consists of a 2-column table?

Like many here I want some text justified left and some justified right in my footer, so I created a table for it directly in the footer of my Right page.
But when I mirror my page layout to create the Left page the table's columns don't get switched around.

Lise, welcome to the forums!
The mirroring action will mirror page margins and (I think, therefore) the locations of frames on the page: body frame, decoration frame, footer frame, and so forth. But it will have no affect on content within a frame, and your table is content. Your only option will be to manually switch up the content within the two cells of your table.

[lise]

Lise, welcome to the forums!
The mirroring action will mirror page margins and (I think, therefore) the locations of frames on the page: body frame, decoration frame, footer frame, and so forth. But it will have no affect on content within a frame, and your table is content. Your only option will be to manually switch up the content within the two cells of your table.

Thanks Nita. I figured as much, just thought there might be a trick I didn't know about. It is no big deal to change them up for Left and Right pages.