question about drop cap

Here is an approach I have used in the past. It assumes that you aren't using subscripted characters anywhere else in your document. And it takes some hand work to get the rest of the lines to run around the cap. I actually typeset a Bible with FrameMaker and had 1189 of these to do!

Hi Pierre:

InDesign and FrameMaker are both page layout applications from Adobe but are used for different types of documents. I work with both daily: both for layout work and well as a certified instructor. Both programs are powerful and share some of the same features but certain jobs call for one over the other. I will agree that a drop cap is much easier to define in InDesign but there are things that FrameMaker can do (i.e. a run-in head—so that two paragraphs can be on the same line) that InDesign can't. I'm one of the lucky few who knows both at a high-level so I can look at a job and pick the right application to lay it out quickly and efficiently.

I teach drop caps in my advanced FrameMaker class in a chapter on anchored frames. Here's my approach:

1. Remove the first letter of the paragraph.
2. Insert an anchored frame, set to run into paragraph.
3. Size it a little bit bigger than the drop cap.
4. Use the Text Line tool to add the letter to the frame.
5. Format it with a character style. (Text lines can't accept paragraph styles.)
6. Then tighten up the frame so that it fits the letter.
7. Adjust the gap around in anchored frame panel.

~Barb

In fact, I would like to find something as simple and powerful as in InDesign.

Either as a graphic text letter, or a flow text letter in a text frame, either inside an Anchored Frame, Run into Paragraph, Alignment Left.

There might also be a way using a Run-In paragraph format, but I don't see an immediate way to use Character Format, as it won't provide the baseline alignment control needed.
Update: played with Run-In a bit, including negative spacings, and haven't found a way to get FM to not use the dropcap's baseline for the continuing para.

Personally, I dislike DCs, and never use them in my own work. If a client wanted it, I'd likely use the anchored frame hack.

If you can get it to work, a further consideration is output workflow. Having it render to PDF or print would be no problem, but it appears that HTML/CSS has no convention for DC yet, and even if it did, getting the FM hack to flow to to it would be a challenge.