Guidelines – as their name indicates – should help you create your layout on the page. Now there are certain standard cases where guidelines are really helpful, but their positioning takes a lot of effort. One of these standard cases for instance is a typical newspaper layout with three uniform columns. The three text frames required for this should lie a given distance from the edge of the page, with a (somewhat smaller) separation between them. You could now fetch a pocket calculator and start to work out the exact positions and dimensions of the text frames, but Calamus makes this much easier for you: This is because Calamus can calculate guidelines automatically from the preset values. You can then magnetize these (in the Frame editor parameters function group of the Frame editing module) and snap the text frames precisely to their correct position.
Besides mutiple columns Calamus can also create multiple rows. In that case the frames will not be placed side by side but stacked underneath each another. Naturally you can use both columns and rows together in a layout.
When you click on the Set multiple columns
icon, the
corresponding dialog box opens:
For Number / Rows
enter in the editable field how many
frames should later be placed below each other, for Number /
Columns
how many frames should appear next to each other. In
addition you can enter in the corresponding Borders
fields how
much free space should be left between frames both vertically and
horizontally. Finally you can also set the size of the margins to be
left free from the edge of the sheet. All units of measurements will
be those set in the Page module for Page size
.
Warning: If you enter zero for the value of Rows
,
then the specified top and bottom margin settings will be ignored. The
same thing applies for the left and right margins if zero is entered
for Columns
.
A new feature added recently is the Preview
field in which
all values are reflected as they are input, so that you can
immediately judge the appearance of the multi-column page. As usual
you can apply these settings only to the current master page or
globally to all master pages.
After you input all the values and close the dialog with [OK],
Calamus creates the multi-column guidelines; to differentiate them
from normal guidelines they are drawn dotted. If you cannot see them
at first, check in the next function group that they have been
switched on! (You can also set the colour of various guidelines
there.) You cannot delete these guidelines in the normal way; this is
only possible by selecting Set multiple columns
again and
entering zero for the number of rows and columns.
These guidelines are not frames as yet! You have to draw these up explicitly. The best thing is to switch the guidelines to magnetic in both directions. That allows you to draw out a frame very simply that lies precisely over the area limited by four guidelines.
After the theory comes the practice:
You want to create text frames for the layout shown below. To do
this, click on the Set multiple columns
icon and enter the
values taken from the illustration. Click on [OK] or press [Return]
and there you have your guidelines. Now you still have to draw up the
text frames. Just switch the guidelines in both horizontal and
vertical direction to magnetic in the Frame editor parameters function
group of the Frame editing module. To draw up a frame you have to
change over to its Tools function group and then click on the Create
frame icon. Now you have to tell Calamus that you want to draw up a
text frame by clicking on the corresponding icon. For each text frame
click twice somewhere in the rectangle that is formed by the
guidelines at the desired position. At the first click the upper left
corner snaps to the upper left corner of the guideline rectangle, the
second positions the lower right corner. That's it!
