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Layout elements of Calamus

All in a frame – the layout elements of Calamus

Frames are the basic design elements of Calamus. What these frames are and how they are generated and processed is the topic of this section.

As is the case with all other work, an amount of planning and preparation is also required for the layout so that the result is qualitatively acceptable. When desiging a document (it's all the same whether poster, magazine or book) it's usual to define first the basic structure of a page in a so-called draft scribble. Such a scribble for a magazine could look something like this:

Even without knowing what is actually to be printed on the page, you can form an idea of how it will look later: A headline provides brief information about the following text and is separated from it by a line. The text itself will be printed in three columns, with an embedded photograph. The rectangles sketched in the scribble will later have text or images inserted in them.

In formerly used layout processes the contents in the form of text column galleys and images on photographic film were pasted on a transparent foil (or on layout paper from which a film was made later in a process camera). The text columns originated from meter-long galleys – single column film or paper strips that were cut up in such a way that the columns of the layout were just filled to the bottom. Calamus SL does all this in the computer.

The rectangles in the scribble where you marked which items are placed where are called frames in the world of the desktop layouter. You can produce frames on the screen, change their size, move or delete them, and much more. Naturally, you can also fill frames with content. The real new thing with desktop publishing is that you can alter a previously filled frame, and this alteration has direct consequences on the contents of the frame. For example if you take a frame that contains text (briefly, a text frame) and make it slightly narrower, it is clear that, with the same font size, fewer characters will fill a line. Calamus therefore moves the text around during the resizing of a text frame so that it again lies completely within the frame. One speaks also of reformatting the text. Something similar applies to pictures: In order to increase or reduce the size of a picture all you have to do is increase or reduce the size of the frame accordingly – the computer deals with the rest.

This frame concept includes some design objects to which one wouldn't assign the character of a frame at first: Lines, Filled areas and Tiling frames. For the sake of the uniformity of programming and the user guide, these objects are also treated as frames.

In contrast to conventional layout, frames are type-bound in Calamus: Only text can fill a text frame, a picture frame can only accept a picture, and a graphics frame accepts no other data than a graphic. At first sight this seems rather restrictive, but since each type of element is handled and processed in a different way this separation is very useful. There are nine types of frame altogether at present:

Text frames

Raster graphics frames (Picture frames)

Vector graphics frames (Graphics frames)

Line frames

Raster area frames

Tiling frames

Groups frames

Masks group frames

Special frames (Uniframes)

Text frames can only take text, though it can be in all sizes and shapes. Text contained in them can be processed in Calamus in so many ways that two of its own modules (see Text module and Text style module) are assigned to this area.

Graphic elements can be stored in the computer as two fundamentally different types: As raster graphics or as vector graphics. The difference between the two is discussed in detail in the following section. Calamus provides a frame type for each of these two kinds of graphic.

You can import the contents of text, raster and vector graphics frames. This means that you may create texts or graphics with other programs and then place them in Calamus frames. This corresponds to the paste-up on a layout page or foil. Here however Calamus provides decisive support: During text import this will be reformatted automatically (including hyphenation if desired) and will also split up the text across multiple pages if necessary.

You cannot read data into the three frame types line, raster area and tiling frame, as they are defined completely within Calamus. An example: After drawing up a raster area frame you can determine whether the area contained within it is to be round, triangular, rectangular with rounded corners or have one of many other shapes. Likewise, you can define the colour, shadow throw and the border of the area. This applies similarly for line frames.

As already suggested above, usually altering a frame also results in the altering of its contents. How these alterations are implemented depends crucially on the frame type. An example: If the width of a text frame is reduced, its line length is altered. The entire text within the frame must thus be split up again to fit the words into the new line length. If the text finished just before the end of the frame it may no longer fit after this reformatting. In that case it might be necessary for the surplus text be printed on the next page or in the next column. Calamus can take over all these functions for you.

Now the same situation with a raster graphic frame: If you make this narrower, depending on the setting the picture contained within is either reduced in scale or cut off at the side. Here, it does not make sense to execute a reformatting and to add the missing sections at the bottom as is the case with the text frames.

You can also copy complete frames. This copy process is comparable with the copying and subsequent pasting down of a galley column. In Calamus you also have the possibility of differentiating between a so-called physical and a virtual copy. The difference between the two is discussed in detail in the section Frame editing module. Here it should just be noted that the difference is that with a virtual copy, all later modifications to the original are also executed in the copy.

In addition you can combine several frames into a group. Imagine this as if you pasted up the corresponding galley columns on a foil or layout paper to obtain a new, larger galley. So, in the same way that you can combine this super-galley with other super-galleys into a super-super-galley, you also have the option in Calamus to combine frame groups into another group. The advantage here is: You can dissolve the frame groups again, in other words break up a super-galley into its constituent parts once more. With present layout processes this is very cumbersome, in Calamus a single button press is enough.

A relatively new special frame (uniframe) can be found in Calamus' palette of frame types. You can work on special frames (copy, change, delete, etc.) just like any other frame, though the contents of these frames are managed completely by special modules, so Calamus knows nothing about the real contents of these frames. A good example of these are the vector blends (graduated tints) produced by the optional module LineArt. These blends are generated for both screen and printer output by LineArt, therefore if LineArt is not loaded then there will only be a white patch here.

This is a first introduction to the basic understanding of the frames concept in Calamus. More detailed information about how the individual frame functions are served can be found in the section Frame editing module.


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Last updated on December 12, 2015

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