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Chapter 9
Working with Paragraph Text
Featuring
The purpose of the paragraph
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Navigating your way
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Choosing between artistic
and paragraph text
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Remember the hotkeys
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Importing text
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It has been one of computing lifes little secrets.
Up until DRAW 7, many DRAW users remained oblivious to that other
way to create text. Paragraph text has gradually, with each new
version, become a legitimate tool for text-intensive projects. Many users
of earlier versions were accustomed to creating art in DRAW and assembling
the pieces of a brochure or an advertising layout in PageMaker or some
other page-layout program. Now they do the whole thing in DRAW, thanks
to the programs beefed-up support for setting, formatting, and editing
large blocks of copy.
You create paragraph text inside a text frame, instead of directly on
the page as you do artistic text. This distinction is clearer since DRAW
7, because the most direct way to create paragraph text is to drag the
Text tool to create the frame before you begin to type.
The distinction is important because paragraph text has a different personality.
Paragraph text uses word wrap, like the documents you create in
your word processor, to create text that flows freely from one line to
the next. The shape of the text flow is determined by the frame you establish
when you first create it; the frame can be reshaped later and the text
will flow to the new shape. Figure 9.1 shows renditions of the same paragraph
of text, each one shaped differently.
FIGURE
9.1 Dragging the selection handles of paragraph
text affects the flow, not the size, of the text.
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| TIP If you want
to size your paragraph text with its frame, press and hold Alt as
you drag one of the corner handles of the frame. But notice that line
spacing will adjust when you do this only if it is set as a percentage
of type size.
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The Purpose of the Paragraph
One of the chief limitations of paragraph text is its indifference to
most of DRAWs special effects. You cannot distort, skew, extrude,
or do any of the other gee-whiz things to paragraph text. In reality,
though, this is more of a safety measure than a flaw, because if you are
trying to apply a special effect to a frame of text, one of two things
is probably taking place:
- You are using a small amount of copy, so
you could easily convert it to artistic text and then apply the effect.
- You are trying to apply a special effect
to too large a block of copy, the results of which would probably be
an aesthetic disaster.
The purpose of paragraph text is to allow you to set a lot of copy, not
to create lots of artistic text. To this end, youll find a treasure
of features hidden within paragraph text, as described in the paragraphs
that follow.
Better Redraw
and Bigger Capacity
Paragraph text is much faster on the redraw than artistic text. When
you change typeface, style, or size, paragraph text adjusts almost instantaneously,
while artistic text may take a bit longer, especially if the string is
long or effects have been applied to it.
While the capacity of both types of text has been greatly increased over
the years, you will run into problems if you try to set huge blocks of
copy in artistic text. However, there are no practical limits on the amount
of text you can set with DRAWs paragraph text.
Better Text
Control
Paragraph text offers the kinds of controls you would expect to find
in a program that supports large quantities of text. You can set tabs
and indents; create left and right margins; set space above and below
a paragraph and between the lines of a paragraph; set up columns and adjust
frame width; and specify bullet characters or drop caps at the beginning
of paragraphs.
All of this is done through the Format Text dialog, the various pages
of which are shown in Figure 9.2. With the text box selected, go to Text
Ø Format Text. Alternately, you can
use the hotkey Ctrl+T, the property bar, or the Properties sheet that
you can invoke by right-clicking on a frame of text.
Basic text-formatting functions are also available on the property bar;
the range of such functions is greatest when working with the Text tool.
- The Font page The Font page of the Format Text dialog is essentially
identical to the artistic text version discussed in Chapter 8. The only
difference is that the Range Kerning control is not available for paragraph
text, unless you first highlight a portion of the text. You can still
adjust the spacing of individual characters, however, with the Shape
tool, or on the Space page of the dialog.
- The Align page Alignment controls and hyphenation are here.
The Character Shift controls at the bottom-right of the page allow you
to move or rotate selected characters. The Indent controls are like
those of most word processors. Figure 9.3 shows three of the most common
Indent settings, along with their results. As with artistic text, if
you want to do this with multiple noncontiguous characters, you are
better off using the Shape tool and its property bar controls.
FIGURE
9.2 The many faces of Format Text when used
with paragraph text.
FIGURE
9.3 Controlling margins and indents is easy
with paragraph text.
- The Space page This page provides controls for space between
characters, words, and lines within a paragraph (leading). You can also
designate space above and below paragraphs (remember, you can have many
paragraphs within one frame of text).
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| TIP Remember
that you can insert line breaks into paragraphshard returns
that do not signify the end of the paragraph. Unlike paragraph breaks,
DRAW does not add any space above or below a line break. It simply
drops down to the next line without waiting for the text to wrap at
the end. You can insert these line breaks with Shift+Enter.
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- The Tabs page Tab controls work like every other tab function
known to computing-kind. Leadered tabs can be set, using any character
of any typeface you have installed. (Go easy on leadered smiley faces
though, okay?)
- The Frames and Columns page The controls on this page of the
Format Text dialog allow you to specify how many columns you want within
the current frame, how wide they should be, and how much space should
be left between columns. You can tell DRAW to fit the columns into the
existing frame width or to adjust the frame to fit the column widths
you want.
The Frames and Columns page is also the home of Vertical Justification
of text. The default setting is Top, which is what you are used to:
the text begins at the top of the frame, uses the line spacing you specify,
and ends wherever you run out of things to say. The other possibilities
are Center, Bottom, and Fullthe latter adjusting the line spacing
automatically to fill the frame.
- The Effects page This set of controls enables you to precede
any paragraph with a bullet or a drop cap. Any typeface that is identified
as a symbol face (a property given to a typeface by its
developer) will show up here in the font list when Bullet is the Effect
Type. This means you can go way beyond the bounds of good taste when
setting bullets, as clearly demonstrated by Figure 9.4.
FIGURE
9.4 There could come a time when a smiley face
would be suitable as a bullet character. Then again, maybe not.
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| WARNING Despite
the ease of creating a drop cap, theres something else you should
watch for. If you add a drop cap to a carefully sized text frame,
it may take up more room than is available. When the middle selection
handle below the frame turns into a downward-pointing arrow, DRAW
is telling you that the text no longer fits in its entirety. Fixing
it is easyjust extend the framebut missing it is also
all-too-easy, so keep an eye out for it.
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