Graphics questions

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sforrest
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Graphics questions

Post by sforrest »

Two quick questions that I hope are not two dumb (both involve graphics):

1) Is it possible to reference an auto-title in the text? For example say the graphic is number 1 in a Auto Title flow called 'Figure'. Is it possible to have a sentence that says: Blah Blah Blah (See Figure 1). where the Figure one references the auto-title flow so I don't have to manually update it?

2) When I insert a graphic, I find that it anchors to the where I place. However, the text does not flow to fill the space prior to the graphic. The result is a horrid looking thing where I end a paragraph, then have half a page of blank space, then the next page a graphic, then the continuation of the text. Is it possible to have the text flow into that void?

Thanks all!

Stephen
Mart°n
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Re: Graphics questions

Post by Mart°n »

Answer to question no. 1:
No, it is currently not possible to reference auto-titles or anything else. The Redlers are working on cross-references at the very moment and the above should be possible with the upcoming Mellel 2.5 but as even the beta-test was delayed for over a week, nobody knows when Mellel 2.5 will be available. Don’t expect it too soon.

Answer no. 2:
Mellel does not support flowing images right now, so text won’t flow around (at the right or left border, for example) or flow at all. Mellel handles images like a inserted letter. If you like to move the image, you could copy and paste it to the location you like to but you have to update this location as you add more words to the text prior to your image as the image won’t stay at the first position (it moves along with the letters/words). So it’s recommended to do your final layout (positioning of images…) after you’ve finished your text. Alternatively you could use some other application to generate your layout (Pages, Papyrus Office, Swift Publisher, iCumulus, Adobe InDesign).
jannuss
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Re: Graphics questions

Post by jannuss »

Mart°n wrote: Answer no. 2:
Mellel does not support flowing images right now,
There is a somewhat awkward, but doable workaround using tables
-- define a table with one row and two columns
-- select both table cells and in the table palette set the line type to "none"
-- place your image in the left-hand or right-hand cell
-- resize the cell to suit your needs
-- add text to the opposite cell.

Once you've done this once or twice, you'll get used to planning ahead so that the image and the text fit together easily.

Janet
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Re: Graphics questions

Post by Mart°n »

jannuss wrote:
Mart°n wrote: Answer no. 2:
Mellel does not support flowing images right now,
There is a somewhat awkward, but doable workaround using tables
Thanks for posting this over and over again but it remains true that Mellel doesn’t support text “flow” around images. The procedure you describe is how to mimic the optical output of text flowing around an image but a single word added at the beginning of your document could destroy you whole layout with 167 faked text around image tables. Even more, this approach prevents you from using hyphenation correctly (if the last word inside the table should be hyphenated), sometimes it destroys correct spell checking (if you have to break words apart manually) and the final look is still questionable as it is really hard to align pictures correctly with the baseline of the text.
Even more, the problem of sforrest would not be solved by this as he likes the text to flow either around or above/below the image so his layout problems of somewhat empty pages won’t occur.

This was not meant to attack you personally but I don’t think it’s o.k. to suggest anyone that it’s an easy or doable task to create nifty text/image layouts with Mellel when it simply is not the case. Mellel is great for writing, but some tasks should be transferred to other applications. I don’t like to do things the computer is made for (manually copy & paste text into table cells, manually number each of 500 lines of text, manually rename 2451 files…) So if an application can’t do what I’m looking for, I recommend to look for another one (knowing well that handling footnotes and TOCs isn’t easy when doing you layout in an other app).
jannuss
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Re: Graphics questions

Post by jannuss »

Mart°n wrote: Thanks for posting this over and over again but it remains true that Mellel doesn’t support text “flow” around images.
Correct Martin.
Whether "doable" or not, no manual workaround should have to be applied 167 times in a single document.

That being said, having to pass your document through two applications is also an awkward solution. Users should be given the complete picture and then allowed to select the solution they prefer.

Janet
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