Styles and Imported full size PDFs

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Vanceone
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Joined: 2013-05-03 07:06:31

Styles and Imported full size PDFs

Post by Vanceone »

Now that Nisus Writer 3.2 allows multi-page PDF imports automatically, which is something I do a lot of, I thought I'd share a tip or two. I primarily use this feature to import into my Nisus document a PDF of two in an appendix--the original, as it were, that I am discussing in the main part of my text.

So, I typically have to put the PDF file under its own heading so it can be catalogued for table of contents, or used as a target for bookmarks, etc. Point being, I end up with a full page PDF right under a Nisus heading.

That... can lead to page flow issues, where all you have is a heading on one page and then the PDF itself flows to the next page. Not necessarily ideal. What I've found is that 1) you can shrink that first PDF page like any other image, and 2) if you go into the formatting palette for paragraph formatting, you will find that the PDF is pasted with a "normal" style, for the most part. Usually, your normal style will have widow-orphan, keep with next paragraph, and maybe other paragraph formatting checked off. If you uncheck all of that for both the heading as well as for the first page of the PDF (select it and you can change the styles applied to it), you will find that frequently Nisus will then put your PDF image right under your heading, on the same page.

I hope this helps people with having mysterious layout bugs regarding full size PDF pages inserted into their documents. Main thing, check the styles applied to the image of the PDF.
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martin
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Re: Styles and Imported full size PDFs

Post by martin »

That's a good tip Vance, thanks for sharing. It's important to be mindful of the various paragraph layout options when working with images.

I typically like my document's style sheet to have paragraph styles for "Figure" and "Figure Caption" with the appropriate settings, eg: "keep with next ¶" enabled for figures, but turned off for captions. It sounds like your documents are structured the other way around, with the figure title above the image, but either way having a "Figure" or "Image" paragraph style to enforce the correct "keep with" settings is a good idea.
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