How can I do this in Mellel?

kurisu · Post by **kurisu** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 11:43 am

Hi there, I want to add a legend that look like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kurisu724/280469259/ However, I couldn't set a line appears under "Figure" in auto-title. Is that possible to do that in Mellel? Think the original PDF was made in Framemaker.

Thanks in advance,
Chris

nicka · Post by **nicka** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 1:02 pm

Yes. It's a bit kludgy, but here's a way:

Edit the figure auto-title. Put a line of underline characters at the end in a free text box. Make sure that you put a space at the beginning. (Or you could put a separate space in a free text box between the number and the underlines). Make sure that the paragraph style for the figure autotitle is flush left (left-justified, as some people say), not justified ('fully justified').
This creates an underline on the line below your caption. However it will be too low to look good.
To fix this, create a character style with a positive baseline shift (I found 10 points about right with an 11 point font size). Call it something like 'underline'. Go back into editing auto-titles and apply this character style to the free text box with the underlines in it.
This should tighten up the spacing to produce something that looks like your example.

kurisu · Post by **kurisu** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 1:29 pm

nicka wrote:Yes. It's a bit kludgy, but here's a way:

Put a line of underline characters at the end in a free text box. Make sure that you put a space at the beginning. (Or you could put a separate space in a free text box between the number and the underlines). Make sure that the paragraph style for the figure autotitle is flush left (left-justified, as some people say), not justified ('fully justified').
This creates an underline on the line below your caption. However it will be too low to look good.

thanks heaps! just to make sure i got it right. the approach you suggested would not put a line under "Figure" but after, right?

nicka · Post by **nicka** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 1:39 pm

It puts it on the next line, as in your example at Flickr. No carriage-return is needed (luckily, since you can't have them in auto-titles) as long as you make the string of underlines long enough to take up (nearly) a whole line on its own. Try it and see.

kurisu · Post by **kurisu** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 2:03 pm

nicka, you're brillant! i've been trying to do this on and off for ages and since i'm about to hand in my thesis on first monday in november, i needed someone's help! just love this layout somehow~

cheers!
chris

rpcameron · Post by **rpcameron** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 6:57 pm

nicka wrote:It puts it on the next line, as in your example at Flickr. No carriage-return is needed (luckily, since you can't have them in auto-titles) as long as you make the string of underlines long enough to take up (nearly) a whole line on its own. Try it and see.

I'm not sure that's entirely true. Isn't it possible to either enter a [Shift]+[Return] (or is it [Opt]+[Return]) for a line break in the Free Text element, or a line break element—that can be entered in the Auto-Title set-up dialogue? I'm not entirely certain as I don't have my MacBook with me, but I'll double-check when I get back home this evening.

(I'll also check out another option, which may be to use notestreams immediately below the text instead of at the bottom of the page, and use the line option for the note element. Again, I'll investigate these options when I can actually sit down with Mellel and try it out. In any case, thanks for the existing workaround nicka.)

digimarkus · Post by **digimarkus** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 6:00 am

This is a good example of why I would like to see the ability to add borders and shading to paragraph (and character) styles. With this feature, adding a line under an autotitle would be a snap.

See Poll @ http://forum.redlers.com/viewtopic.php?t=668

rpcameron · Post by **rpcameron** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 7:20 am

So I created a replica using note streams. There are two parts to this: creation of a semi-invisible character style; and a note stream to create the formatting you are looking for. Just duplicate your regular character style, name it something similar to "invisible", but change the font size to 0.1. This character style is only going to be used in one place, so it's not very significant.

Next, you need to set up a note stream. I've attached what I used for my note stream. You can also see where I've used the new character style I've created.

My invisible character style:

My settings for the note stream:

And how close I was able to replicate your image. (Only the picture was taken from your post, all of the text and line was created with Mellel.):

kurisu · Post by **kurisu** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 9:46 am

just as i started to doubt the creativity of how mellel could be before i post, how dare was i?

i'm amazed on how creative the people in this forum are! i've been trying to do this for months....

rpcameron, with your approach, does that mean the only numbering for figures is from 1 to whatever number you got? i set up an auto-title to take care of the chapter and section such that it would show something like Figure 3.6 or Figure 4.2.

thanks again!
chris

rpcameron · Post by **rpcameron** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 4:08 pm

kurisu wrote:rpcameron, with your approach, does that mean the only numbering for figures is from 1 to whatever number you got? i set up an auto-title to take care of the chapter and section such that it would show something like Figure 3.6 or Figure 4.2.

No, actually the "1" after the word figure was the note reference number. This way the note streams will automatically handle numbering for you. I suppose you could do a combination of the two, and use the "invisible" character style for both the note and the reference of the number, and use an Auto–Title for the "Figure x.y". It adds an extra layer of complexity, but then it will be fully automated ...

Mart°n · Post by **Mart°n** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 9:40 pm

To easily create a line in Mellel, you could enter a table with one row and one cell, select the table and adjust the borders so that only the bottom border shows a black line. Now you could adjust that table to a very low height (to do this, you need to adjust the font size and line spacing to 1pt each).

It’s easy to create but you have to insert those table manually (via copy & paste) after every auto-title.