Cell shading and adding a graphic above/below a paragraph

[Lance_Santin]

Hi all--

I'm creating a two-column, one-row table for examples. For the left column, I set up shading for 30% light gray. For the paragraph tag in that same column, I'm importing a frame, which contains the word "Example," from the Reference page. To do this, I selected the Advanced tab in the Paragraph Designer, and selected the frame I created on the Reference page from the Frame Below Pgf. drop-down list.

The frame appears in the table column, but it appears that the background of the word "Example" isn't transparent. So, the shading of the cell is blocked out by the frame from the Reference page. See the attached .gif file.

Can anyone provide ideas for either making the frame transparent, or adding shading to the frame? Thanks!

[Art_Campbell1]

Frame doesn't support transparency, so that's your main problem.

I'd redo the graphic on a larger 30% gray background that's the same total area as your cell and import that, so that the effect is all in the graphic.

Depending on how you set it up, you could probably simplify a bit and not bother setting the table cell shading -- I suspect there will be a line where the graphic transitions if you do turn the shading on.

[Lance_Santin]

Hi there Art,

I hear what you're saying. Actually, what's inside the frame on the Reference page is text. In this case, it's the word "Example," which has its own character format. I was hunting in the Character Designer for background shading (or something on those lines), but had no luck.

I know my previous employer accomplished exactly what I'm trying to do, but I can't seem to figure out exactly how they got this all to work. I might try something like what you're suggesting though. Thanks for the idea, Art.

[Mike Wickham]

I wonder if it would be easier put "Example" in the autonumber format for

the paragraph format in that column, rotate the table cells, and shade the

column? I haven't tried it.

[Lance_Santin]

Hi Mike,

You know, yesterday I tried exactly what you said--using the autonumbering function. But I can't get the table cell rotation to become part of the table format. So each time I insert that Example table, I'd need to rotate the cell manually. Arg!

[Mike Wickham]

Perhaps you could use the Auto-Text plugin from

http://siliconprairiesoftware.com to create the table once. Then paste it in

and copy extra rows if you need them. Or build it with extra rows, and

delete the extras in one step.

Mike Wickham

[Lance_Santin]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for continuing to work at my issue here. Check out what Van suggested. This resolved my problem. In short, he suggested I set the frame fill pattern to None on the Reference page. It worked perfectly. But thanks again. I appreciate your help with that.

Lance

[Van Kurtz · Accepted solution]

Lance,

Going back to your original question, I did some testing. On the reference page, select the frame containing the word Example. Then from the drawing tools, set its fill pattern to None; this makes the frame transparent.

In my testing, I created a graphic frame with fill of None and inserted a text line inside it. This works.

You can also create a text frame inside the graphic frame and also set the fill pattern of the text frame to None. This also works.

Apparently, although you can create a text frame on the reference page, FrameMaker does not allow you to name it; hence, you cannot use it in the paragraph designer as a frame above/below. But creating a graphic frame with fill of None DOES work.

Good luck,

Van

[Lance_Santin]

Van,

You're brilliant! Thanks so much for figuring out how to resolve this. I spent hours trying to fix this on my own. I just didn't think of setting the fill pattern to None on the Reference page. Thanks again. I really appreciate you spending the time to test it out. Look at how good the table looks now!

Lance