Header collapses when edited

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kjmatthews
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Header collapses when edited

Post by kjmatthews »

I've been using Mellel for a couple of years now, and have never been able to figure this out. Nearly all of my page styles in all my style sets have a .5-in. margin between the top of the page and the header, and also define the header height as .5-in., so that body text begins a full 1 in. from the top of the page. I define the space before the header in Document Setup, and the height and default contents of the header in the Page style. When I open a new document, it looks something like this:

---[blank space]---
Default header text
---[blank space]---
Body text

The problem is that if I want to edit the default header text, the blank space below it collapses, and there is *no way to expand it again* short of hitting return a bunch of times to approximate the blank space that ought to be there, or clicking Layout > Page Style and re-selecting the page style I was using. Is this what it supposed to happen when you edit the contents of a header? It may be unusual to want to edit the contents of a header, but I can't understand why this would be a desirable effect.
ozean
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Re: Header collapses when edited

Post by ozean »

I haven’t tried to reproduce this, but it sounds like a bug to me. I remember that there was a bug with the header that I encountered from time to time too. (It also made the header collapse, but only partly.) I do not remember an announcement that this bug was fixed in any of the prior releases. (Did you search the forums for keywords like header collapse bug … ?)

To be sure you should send a bug report along with a sample document to the Redlers. Seems like this would be a “natural” fix that would go along well with pimping the page layout engine in general (i.e. the work on text flow around images etc.)
macula
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Re: Header collapses when edited

Post by macula »

I have more or less the same issue with footers! As soon as I edit even a single character in the footer (e.g. delete one of the hyphens surrounding the page number), the footer collapses. Of course, in the case of the footer it collapses downwards but this is the only difference.

Is this really a bug?
kjmatthews
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Re: Header collapses when edited

Post by kjmatthews »

I reported this to the developers and they told me that it was not a bug but a poorly implemented feature. I think they're planning to change it for the next bugfix update.
donb
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Re: Header collapses when edited

Post by donb »

This is an inevitable consequence of the way that Mellel proceeds. The elasticity of the depth of the headers and footers allows for so many valuable things that I would hate to lose it.
The simplest solution immediately available, to my mind, would be to make a keyboard shortcut for page style so that you could simply press the necessary key -- maybe one of the higher F keys -- to set it right. Mellel itself has no provision for making such a keyboard shortcut, but the operating system does. Assuming you are using Leopard or Snow Leopard, you can set a shortcut for this purpose by assigning the shortcut in the System Preferences's provision for assigning a shortcut to any menu item in any program. Then when you have edited a header (or footer) you would merely need to press, say, F10, or whatever other shortcut key you assigned for the purpose, when you finished editing the heading/footer.

Don Broadribb
kjmatthews
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Re: Header collapses when edited

Post by kjmatthews »

donb wrote:The elasticity of the depth of the headers and footers allows for so many valuable things that I would hate to lose it.
Still, if the height of the header or footer is explicitly set by the user, it seems to me that Mellel should respect that height.
macula
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Re: Header collapses when edited

Post by macula »

I really hope it is changed soon because, classified as a 'bug' or not, this feels and behaves as "broken." My dissertation specifications explicitly require the page number to be located exactly 2 cm from the bottom of the page. It is virtually impossible to achieve this because as soon as one "touches" the footer it collapses.
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