Spacing Around Borders

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Groucho
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Spacing Around Borders

Post by Groucho »

I really like the No. 5 new feature – paragraph-level borders and shading. I especially like the way you can enforce it through a style. That’s very useful. But I wished there were a way to set spacing too, not just padding. Thus you can really make a paragraph stick out. Take a block-quote, for example. Many times I like to insert a quotation between two horizontal lines, like this:

------------------
quotation
------------------

with some space before and after. That’s why I need to set spacing too.

Cheers, Henry.
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phspaelti
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Re: Spacing Around Borders

Post by phspaelti »

Does "Spacing Before/After" not work for you? Regular old paragraph spacing gives me space outside the paragraph borders, and padding gives me space between the paragraph border and paragraph text.
philip
Groucho
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Re: Spacing Around Borders

Post by Groucho »

That sure works, but I was talking about something else. Suppose you have a quotations with three paragraphs. If you set space before and after to three points, the whole block will be spaced by three points but also paragraphs will be spaced by six points. This is what I don’t want. I only want space to be before and after the block, that’s all. Think of it like a cell in an html document. In an html cell you set padding (blank space between the content and the border), border and spacing (blank space around the border).
I hope this makes sense.

Cheers, Henry.
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martin
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Re: Spacing Around Borders

Post by martin »

Hi Henry- I think you can achieve what you'd like. At least, if I understand your description correctly. You'll want to turn on only the top and bottom border edges for your style, and not the intra-paragraph edge. Then increase the vertical padding (in the Paragraph Borders palette). I'll attach a sample.
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borders.zrtf
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Groucho
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Re: Spacing Around Borders

Post by Groucho »

Thanks, Martin, but I meant something a little different. Like in this screenshot:
Screenshot 2011-06-29 at 3.54.42 PM.gif
Screenshot 2011-06-29 at 3.54.42 PM.gif (19.9 KiB) Viewed 5044 times
I just set space before and space after (in Paragraph palette) to a convenient amount. All very well with a single paragraph. But with two or more paragraphs, the space applies between paragraphs too. Like this:
Screenshot 2011-06-29 at 4.02.28 PM.gif
Screenshot 2011-06-29 at 4.02.28 PM.gif (14.83 KiB) Viewed 5044 times
Sure I can apply different spacing to first paragraph, last paragraph and those in between. Or apply special space to the paragraphs that come before and after. Feasible. It just takes some doing. That’s all. I just hoped this could be done more easily through the shading formatting.

Cheers, Henry.
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martin
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Re: Spacing Around Borders

Post by martin »

Ah, okay, so really you want a separate "between paragraph" spacing that is only used when two adjacent paragraphs have the same paragraph style applied. Basically an intra-paragraph-style spacing that overrides both the before/after paragraph spacing. That would be a useful feature, and I'll file it as an enhancement, thanks!

Though you can get somewhat close to what you want with paragraph borders. It's just that the spacing is applied within the paragraph borders, not the outside:
block.png
block.png (27.04 KiB) Viewed 5002 times
Not the prettiest, but perhaps it would do.
Groucho
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Re: Spacing Around Borders

Post by Groucho »

That’s it, thanks.

Henry.
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