Note-numbers alignment

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frvs
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Note-numbers alignment

Post by frvs »

Would anyone know how to achieve this result—is it possible in Mellel?

When listing notes, align the note numbers with the zero (0) in ten (10). For example, in the list below, 8. and 9. should be one position to the right:
8.
9.
10.
11.

Thanks for any clue!
Mart°n
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Post by Mart°n »

You couldn’t do this with Mellel’s automatic lists, but if you write (and update) the numbers by yourself, there’s a way to achieve the desired result.

Image

1. Grab one of those nifty decimal-tabs from the tab-well and place it (via drag & drop) onto the ruler. You also could create a own list paragraph style with such a tab at the desired position if you need it more often.

2. Select the tab (it will be highlighted in blue)

3. Open the “margin & tab” palette (with the tab still being selected) and enter a dot (or whatever sign you like to place after the numbers) into the “decimal alignment” field.

4. Enter your text with the scheme shown in the picture above:
TAB (press the tab key once) | the number (10) | the alignment character (.) | a space | your list entry.

That’s it.
frvs
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Post by frvs »

Martºn, many thanks for your thorough explanation. (And I am amazed how you can build such nifty screen images!) Unfortunately, though, my problem regards endnotes. My publisher demands that single-digit note numbers be right-aligned with double-digit note numbers. And, well, I wouldn't want to turn every endnote in my book into a manual note... It is possible to heed my publisher's wish by manually inserting a space before note numbers in Pages as well as in Word, but in this respect Mellel appears to be less flexible than the other two. I am not overlooking anything, am I? What a pity.

I am facing the prospect of having to do the final formatting of my manuscript (written in Mellel) in Word just because Mellel can't produce end-of-chapter endnotes and isn't flexible enough regarding the alignment of note numbers... It sounds silly, it feels absurd, and it saddens me. I had set things up so I can do without cross references, but then such apparently small shortcomigns regarding notes look set to force me to leave Mellel behind at the point I would need it most... Oh well. Again, many thanks, and please let me know if you think of some workaround.
macsailor
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Post by macsailor »

It do work in NWP and I hope it will work in Mellel as well in a future version.

I think Martins work-around is doable, but it would be great if it would work right out-of-the-box in Mellel as well.
Peter Edwardsson
..............................
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frvs
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Post by frvs »

macsailor wrote:It do work in NWP and I hope it will work in Mellel as well in a future version.
Peter,
Are you sure regarding NWP? I have downloaded it and tried it, but see no way to do the trick. How do you do it? Thanks.
macsailor
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Post by macsailor »

frvs wrote:
macsailor wrote:It do work in NWP and I hope it will work in Mellel as well in a future version.
Peter,
Are you sure regarding NWP? I have downloaded it and tried it, but see no way to do the trick. How do you do it? Thanks.
Magic fingers, you know. 8)

I did it like following:

First I chose the "Number List" from the list menu and then I selected the list on the page and chose to have it right aligned. After this, all the following numbers in the list align to the right. The second line may have some difficulties to stay aligned to the right, but after some work it stayed and all the other lines stayed aligned as well.

Image

I really hope that this will be possible in Mellel as well and then maybe in an even better and smoothly way to handle it.
Peter Edwardsson
..............................
Truth is not always popular, but it is always right.
frvs
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Post by frvs »

Ah, now I see. Thanks for the superlatively illustrated example! Unfortunately, though, I realize we are talking about different things. You are teaching me how to right-align numbers in lists. (This is also what Martºn did regarding Mellel, so this trick is possible in Mellel, too.) But my problem concerns endnotes/footnotes. I need to right-align digits in automatically generated lists of endnotes/footnotes, not in lists. But, of course, anytime I will have to do the trick in lists, the lessons by Martºn and you will prove unvaluable. Again, many thanks.
macsailor
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Post by macsailor »

frvs wrote:Ah, now I see. Thanks for the superlatively illustrated example! Unfortunately, though, I realize we are talking about different things. You are teaching me how to right-align numbers in lists. (This is also what Martºn did regarding Mellel, so this trick is possible in Mellel, too.) But my problem concerns endnotes/footnotes. I need to right-align digits in automatically generated lists of endnotes/footnotes, not in lists. But, of course, anytime I will have to do the trick in lists, the lessons by Martºn and you will prove unvaluable. Again, many thanks.
Ok, the endnotes/footnotes that's quite another matter. I hope that will be possible as well in a future version of Mellel (my first choice among word processors).
Peter Edwardsson
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Mart°n
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Post by Mart°n »

frvs wrote:Martºn, many thanks for your thorough explanation. Unfortunately, though, my problem regards endnotes.
Sorry. I somehow managed to ignore all mentions of of the word “notes” in your text. As written by other users, this is not possible with Mellel’s built in notes features. However, you could invest some time and fake this behavior by using a not so elegant (and somewhat time consuming) workaround. First, you should create two character styles:

Footnotes-Text: This is used to write the Footnotes
(example: Myriad, 8pt, black)

Footnotes-Number: This is used to “hide” the original footnote number
(example: Myriad, 1pt, Highlight & Fill: none)

Then you need one paragraph style:

Footnote: The important thing is one decimal alignment tab in the paragraph style ruler as written in my first post.

Image

Having done this, you need to setup the note-style. Within the note-style, you now have to apply the created character & paragraph styles:

Image

Note Symbol: Character Style: Footnote-Numbers, Superscript: checked
Note text Style: Paragraph: Footnote, Character: Footnotes-Text

This setup causes the original footnote number to disappear. First because the color of the number is invisible (none), second, because the number is very very small (1pt, superscript). The ugly part of this hack is that you now have to insert all footnote numbers at your own and have to update them manually. The good thing of this hack is, that you are able to use the right align trick as outlined in my first post. So if you write a footnote now, you couldn’t write: see Calvin & Hobbes, comic 14 but you have to write: [TAB]16. see Calvin & Hobbes, comic 14. So the TAB-key and the number must be inserted by you.

Image
The final Result

Image
The final Result at 1600% zoom level. The original footnote-numbers are colored in orange to show how tiny they are now.

I don’t know if the result is worth all the trouble but at least you could fake the optical appearance of right aligned footnotes.
frvs
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Post by frvs »

Martºn, many thanks for your, again, very useful and ingenious workaround. If the note-alignment problem turns out to be the only thing Mellel can't do when the time comes for me to enter the formatting stage, then I think your solution is well worth trying!

I still have to solve a couple questions — such as, how to get end-of-chapter notes, and how to index the MS, without resorting to Word — but, as it is, you seem to have provided a viable workaround for this one. Again many thanks for your trouble.
Bensch
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Post by Bensch »

Hi Martin!

With which app do you create the graphics in your screenshots?
And how did you get the Mellel-toolbar-buttons replaced? Yours look much better!

Bensch
Mart°n
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Post by Mart°n »

Bensch wrote: With which app do you create the graphics in your screenshots?
The graphics were created with FlySketch http://flyingmeat.com/flysketch/. Some lines (the curvy ones) were drawn by hand with an Wacom Graphic tablet (that’s why they don’t look so smooth).
Bensch wrote: And how did you get the Mellel-toolbar-buttons replaced? Yours look much better!
I’ve created those buttons some time ago to show the Redlers an example of how I would like Mellel to look. As they are done by this time, I’ve replaced the buttons inside the Mellel package (right-click or control-click on the Mellel application and choose “show package contents” from the contextual menu) with the ones you could see in the screenshots. Normally it does even look better with UNO installed http://gui.interacto.net/ but I haven’t had the time to re-install it after the last Mac OS Update.

If you like to hack your Mellel package too (it wouldn’t cause any trouble as only some tiff-images are replaced), I could upload the images to my server.
Bensch
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Post by Bensch »

in fact that would please me, it would be very kind!

and if I recall correctly, the GUI of leopard will be very similar to the changes that UNO makes...

thanks a lot,
bensch
Mart°n
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Post by Mart°n »

Bensch wrote:in fact that would please me, it would be very kind!

and if I recall correctly, the GUI of leopard will be very similar to the changes that UNO makes...
So here we go. Before you start, you should download the following zip-file which contains the new images: Mellel-Interface.zip

Then you could extract the zip file and will find a new folder on your desktop containing the TIFF-Files.

1. Open a Finder window, navigate to your Applications folder (or where ever you’ve stored your Mellel application package), find the Mellel icon and make a backup if you are frightened of loosing the existing interface. (You also could re-download Mellel from the Redler’s site if you don’t want to make a backup)

2. Having done the backup, you could now securely select Mellel again and right click (or control click) on its icon and choose “Show Package contents” from the contextual menu:

Image

3. A new Finder window will be opened, showing the package contents. Navigate to the folder called “Resources” and take a look inside. If you’ve finished, drag and drop all the TIFF images of the new interface into the Resources folder. A window will kindly ask you, if you like to replace the existing files. You could check the “apply to all” option and press the “replace” button.

Image

4. To make the new buttons appear, you have to ensure, that you’ve set up Mellel to show the “brushed metal” interface as I’ve only replaced those resources. You could find the setting in Mellel’s preferences.

Image

5. You may like to apply the UNO interface (as described in my last post) or wait for Leopard. As the Outline-button doesn’t support transparency (in contrast to all the other toolbar-buttons) I’ve had to define a solid color to the edges of the rounded corners. As I use the buttons with UNO (now again), I’ve selected the colors to blend into the UNO title-bar. Therefore you may see some light grey pixels in the corners of this button if you use the current metal look.

Image


I may append that you have to repeat the procedure with every new version of Mellel. As you may have noticed in the screenshot above, I’ve also swapped the Table and the Search button. I’ve done this because I tend to click the magnifier icon (instead of the drop down arrow) if I want to change the zoom level. That’s because I mostly work with graphic and layout apps and the magnifier is used to zoom the image/layout here. By swapping those two buttons, I’m no longer confused by the magnifier icon next to the zoom dropdown.
Long story short, this change is not included in the package above, but I could publish it if needed.

If you have any questions, let me know.
strugatzki
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Re: Note-numbers alignment

Post by strugatzki »

Hello guys, I realize this is a very old thread, but it's 2009 and I just stumbled over the same problem. I think the solution is fairly straight forward, but it only can be done by the Redlers: Just give us an option in the note preferences in the form of " tab + note symbol + another tab". Since the note numbers are ruled by the same paragraph style as the note text, you only have to set two tabs, one decimal or right align for the note numbers, one ordinary left for the note text, et voilà, there you have note numbers that are aligned right.

Unless there is a technical restraint I do not know of, of course. Just in case someone of the Redlers is reading this, what about such a change?

TIA
dominik.
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