Apocolocyntosis wrote:
What did you do to the background (im eager to learn/get pointers) i can sort of see that having the transparent box over the texture etc is awkward but couldn't get it to work by just putting a transparency colour fill in the frame with the texture in it.
I haven't used CS3 for a while, but I get the feeling that a lot of these things were updated for CS4. Transparency can now be set by a slider in the toolbar, so as long as you've got the image box sent to the back, you can just adjust as you see fit.
Otherwise, simply right-click on the image, select 'Effects' and then you can play around with the Transparency directly in the box – no need for an overlay. Again, this might be CS4 specific (but hey, at least it's not Pagemaker!)
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Is there a better way to organise the fluff/'table' boxes? currently im just using offset/padding and then stacking them up manually.
As regards spacing within the boxes (particularly the table), the best bet would be to play with the 'indents/spacing' and 'paragraph rules' parts of the Paragraph Style Options, which gives you proper access to arranging the text within the box.
For between the boxes, I'd just use a standard distance (3mm or so) and check 'em with the guides (you can select multiple guides with shift+left click). This works particularly well if you've established a baseline grid (though that causes all sorts of headaches for complex illustrated files, so I tend to leave it off and do it manually).
On a more general note, I'd strip the boxes off the Master page, and keep them in a Library/on the pasteboard, then drop them in as necessary. I like to keep the Master pages as clean as possible (or have more than one for various options), as this prevents potential mistakes at ozalid stage (such as something at the back being brought forward by accident).
If it's a simple case that you want to delete the default master boxes from the specific pages, you can select them with a ctrl/cmmd+shift click, which'll give you access to the Master items on a specific page (apologies if this is teaching you to suck eggs!
).
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I think a background pack might be a useful thing for the community. I took a load of pics for generating epic document tuxtures at some point and then never did anything with them, got some nice matted seaweed and barnacles that might get some interesting nid results./quote]
Yes, free stuff is good for everyone in the community
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my editor sense was tingling!
I have a particular blind spot for typos in capitals for some reason. I trust you found the other 2 copy mistakes as well
(2 missing fullstops in titan notes)
It was certainly an entertaining proofread – I chuckled at the range '>9000' and 'Ignore Margins' special rule.
Dobbsy wrote:
What's the acceptable paper size when it comes to printing army list documents - say for a supplement? A4 or US Letter...?
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Depends on the size of your print run, the supplier, and who wants it, really. I work for an illustrated book publisher, and most of our stuff's relatively short books in compact print runs. American A4 (called Letter by our friends in the Kingdom of the Freedom Eagle) tends to work out the cheapest for us, but it'd depend entirely on what's wanted.
