Separate header margins from page margins

[ajones]

I've forever been a fan of Mellel but have also forever been wanting to have the page and header margins look separated from each other in document view. Pages.app has this view and it is very aesthetically pleasing.

Here's how Pages look like:


And here's Mellel:


I've searched but can't find. Is there some way to make this happen in Mellel?

[DRB]

Have you tried placing a table in the Header, with your Header content in that?

Don Broadribb

[rpcameron]

Mellel handles headers and footers differently than Pages, and this is why the display is different. Many applications set the margin to be from the edge of the page to the body of the document. But in Mellel, the margins for the top and bottom are not the distance to the body of the text, but rather to the header/footer. So if you want 1" margins, but have a 0.5" header, but no header on the first page, you have to set up a page style with no header on the first page, and 1" top margin, but subsequent pages need to have a 0.5" top margin, and 0.5" header.

[ajones]

Aww.. rpcameron.. that's a bummer..

DRB, I tried placing a table in the Header, but it's unpractical because I have to 'un-color' the header table every time I want to print a document.

Does anyone know if there's a way to custom color margins? I was wondering if I could perhaps do a faded black for the header and footers, it would look a bit more appealing.

[daiyi]

Mellel handles headers and footers differently than Pages, and this is why the display is different. Many applications set the margin to be from the edge of the page to the body of the document. But in Mellel, the margins for the top and bottom are not the distance to the body of the text, but rather to the header/footer. So if you want 1" margins, but have a 0.5" header, but no header on the first page, you have to set up a page style with no header on the first page, and 1" top margin, but subsequent pages need to have a 0.5" top margin, and 0.5" header.

This is a clear explanation. But I must be doing something wrong. I'm helping my wife set up a style sheet for her dissertation. It will be e-filed, and Pro-Quest has very specific formatting requirements. One-inch margins all around for text; and .75 in inch margins for pagination (footer margin at .75). Using the new pages style in Mellel 3.0, it's easy to set up the text margins at one inch. When I set the footer bottom margin at .75 and the text another .25 up (to make the one-inch text margin along the bottom), my page number can't squeeze in (at least it's a little tight). From within the document, I can make ad hoc spacing work pretty well (using a print out and ruler as my guide). But I would prefer to use the Page style (edited). Any suggestions?

LEFT, RIGHT, TOP: 1”
BOTTOM TEXT MARGIN: 1”
FOOTER MARGIN: 0.75” from bottom of the page for page number.

Page numbers must be centered to the text and must be at least 0.75” from the bottom of the page.

Second question: will Mellel export to Adobe PDF without any unforeseeable issues? There will be Japanese text included in the dissertation. To file electronically the dissertation must be in Adobe format. Sometimes Adobe and Apple do not play well.

As always, thanks in advance.

[rpcameron]

I'm helping my wife set up a style sheet for her dissertation. It will be e-filed, and Pro-Quest has very specific formatting requirements. One-inch margins all around for text; and .75 in inch margins for pagination (footer margin at .75). Using the new pages style in Mellel 3.0, it's easy to set up the text margins at one inch. When I set the footer bottom margin at .75 and the text another .25 up (to make the one-inch text margin along the bottom), my page number can't squeeze in (at least it's a little tight). From within the document, I can make ad hoc spacing work pretty well (using a print out and ruler as my guide). But I would prefer to use the Page style (edited). Any suggestions?

Try creating a character and/or paragraph style for the page number in the footer. Make sure you are using no spacing before/after the paragraph, and perhaps adjust the line spacing—perhaps even a line spacing less than one. Another option is to play with fractional values for the character size of the footer, such as 11.25.

Second question: will Mellel export to Adobe PDF without any unforeseeable issues? There will be Japanese text included in the dissertation. To file electronically the dissertation must be in Adobe format. Sometimes Adobe and Apple do not play well.

That shouldn't be a problem. You can try both exporting to PDF from within Mellel, as well as saving to PDF through the print dialog. Then, open the resulting document in Preview and Adobe Reader and see if the fidelity of document is maintained. Better yet, try opening the PDF on another machine, such as a Windows machine, just to ensure that all of your fonts are properly embedded and you are satisfied that the formatting is consistent.

[daiyi]

Thanks for the suggestions! I will try both of them. The PDF I am less worried about. But any last-minute surprises would not be welcome, especially since the filing deadline is 9/4.

[daiyi]

Thanks, rp. Your suggestions for the margins worked.