Graphical Bullets
Graphical Bullets
Bullets are a great way to present a list, much simpler than trying to combine complex information into paragraphs.
The choices are endless, from the standard dot or box through to the Dingbats. A little thought about the content and look of your document will usually suggest an interesting alternative to the dot.
You can also make your own bullets using a tiny version of a logo, a simple item of clipart or an abstract squiggle. The difference between a graphical bullet and a normal graphic is that the bullet needs to move with the text, otherwise you create a nightmare for future edits!
Both Pagemaker and Ventura Publisher have tools to make positioning
easy.
Pagemaker doesn't include direct support for bullets like many DTP programs, so it is up to the user to create them using special characters and tabs.
The general format of a bulleted paragraph is to have the special character, a tab character, the text of the paragraph and finally terminate with a hard return. The standard style Hanging Indent is useful too, you can base a new bullet style on this if you are not sure how to set one up.
Pagemaker also provides an Addition to help format bulleted paragraphs (Aldus Additions-Bullets and Numbering). This Addition automates the task of putting in the bullet character and tab, and provides control over which paragraphs are processed. It also takes care of the counting for numbered bullets and updates automatically should you add a paragraph.
Set up the tab and paragraph as for normal bullets, then any imported graphic can be used as the bullet with the "in-line graphic" option.
If you have your cursor in text mode, and leave it sitting in a text block when placing a graphic, it will be placed as an inline graphic, which means it can be resized with the mouse or control palette and formatted like any other text.
The quickest way to apply graphical bullets is to set up the first paragraph with the correct graphic size, baseline adjustment etc, wipe over the graphic and the tab character with the text cursor and then copy (^C) and paste (^V) the graphic and tab at the beginning of each paragraph.
Tag a paragraph as Bullet, or whatever tagname you want, then select Format/Paragraphs/Special Effects and start choosing. You can change the character, character size, the indent and the font. Automatic consistency is incredibly easy. You can change your mind any time and every occurrence of the tag is updated automatically.
Create two tags, one called GBullet and another called IndentBody, both based on Body Text. They differ from Body Text as follows:
GBullet:
Line Break = BEFORE
Keep With Next = YES
Grow Interline to Fit = ON
Above & Below Paragraph Spacing = Twice setting for Body Text
IndentBody:
In from Left Spacing = 2.5cm
Line Break = AFTER
Make the Bullet
Create a frame of, say, 2cm square (the width must be slightly less than the left indent selected in the IndentBody tag. Give the frame a name, say PICT, via the FRAME/Anchors and Captions/Anchor option.
Fill the frame with the graphic. At this point the frame can be located in any convenient place in your Chapter.
Formatting the text
Whenever you want a Paragraph to use the bullet, tag it with Indent Body. Then create an empty paragraph just above it and tag it with GBullet. Then in Text Mode, put the cursor just in front of the end-of-paragraph marker and under Text/Insert Special Item/Frame Anchor type in PICT, and make it "Relative, Automatically at Anchor".
When this is done, the frame will immediately relocate itself to just before the indented paragraph.
Hints
