I’m creating a template for a hymn project where I need very precise measurements for the location of the title, the hymn number, and other various info in the header of each page. I’ve been working with the text frames in the page layout setup but I’m not seeing specific measurements displayed. ie I need the title to be exactly 5/8 of an inch from the top of the page. I’ve watched Anthony Hughes video about frames and searched the Dorico youtube channel, but have not been able to specifically find this info. I would greatly appreciate your help with this.
When you say you want the title to be exactly 5/8" from the top of the page, do you mean the top of the capital height of the font, or the top of the ascent height?
In the simplest of terms, if you create a top page margin of 5/8", then have a text frame that is positioned right up against the margin, and then you have that text frame set to use Top vertical alignment, you will have text where the line height of the font is exactly 5/8" from the edge of the page, but whether or not the uppermost “black bit” of the text is exactly 5/8" from the edge of the page will depend on how the font you’re using sits inside its line height. You might need to make the top margin e.g. 4/8" instead of 5/8" to account for the difference between the cap height of the font and its line height.
It would be the top of the capital letters. So that makes sense, but I have other text info in the header that comes below that. (bible verse reference, meter, ie) and everything is in a different font. Also the composer and lyricist need to be indented exactly the same on the right and left side of the page.
All of that can be done with careful creation of page templates in Engrave mode. Take your time and go step by step.
One thing that unfortunately Dorico does not have at the moment is on-screen rulers that allow you to see at a glance the distance e.g. of a text frame from the page margin or the edge of the page. So you will have to do some arithmetic to work out distances, and/or print things out and measure them with a ruler.
Grin – sigh – ok, was hoping for an easier way to do that. Thank you!!
Indeed, it’s an area we need to devote some more time to in future. But you will be able to achieve the result you need, and once you have a page template created with everything “just so”, you will be able to reuse it endlessly, and know that everything is in the expected place.
I guess I’ve figured out that you can’t put text frames outside of the margins… Correct?
Correct. You can of course specify page margins of 0 on any or all sides if you want to, but then you have to manually position every frame, so I would recommend you use non-zero margins to produce a consistent result.
When I move a text frame around, I see little green numbers indicating location, however they seem to be constrained (in my case using points) to every .5 points. I’ve tried unchecking the locks in the constraint menu, but it doesn’t let me unlock all of them. Is this a setting?
I’ve just made a discovery I had not considered for this situation. I watched Anthony Hughes video on constraining frames and learned that the properties panel when in the text frame window allows you to set precise measurements for the frames and their distance from the margins.
Exactly what I needed – YAY. Thanks Dorico
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Bingo! I’m surprised no one mentioned it earlier. I depend on it, and it works really well for me.
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