switch between 8.5x11 and A4 sized pages within the same book?

[Roger Shuttleworth]

Hello All

While I agree about the use of two templates, there's a more 
philosophical aspect to this that has not been mentioned. When we talk 
about page size, we refer to the physical paper on which a document will 
be printed. But a more important consideration from an aesthetic point 
of view is the text block size. If you're one of those people who goes 
for one-inch margins all round, this is not an issue. A typographical 
purist, on the other hand, would want to consider all the dimensions on 
the page: text block height and width (and therefore ratio), ratios of 
margins to text block, placement of headers and footers, etc. In most 
cases the right and left margins would be different, and so would the 
top and bottom. (William Bringhurst's book "Elements of Typographical 
Style" is a great resource for this.)

To do this properly you would indeed need to use two different templates 
with different dimensions for all of these, in order to maintain 
pleasing ratios. But you could do a pretty good job with a single 
template if your text block size is well chosen. The few millimetres 
difference between letter size and A4 when printed would not interfere 
too much with the layout. And you would have none of the problems 
associated with reflow of content between the two page sizes.

Just my 2c.

Roger Shuttleworth
London, Canada


On 21/02/2013 10:57 AM, Lise Bible wrote:
> Fellow Framers,
> I'm mostly a lurker, but have found the wealth of knowledge shared by 
> this list's members to be quite helpful!
>
> I have a manual (I'm on Frame 8) in which I've used conditional text 
> to show/hide tables, text, parts lists depending on if it's for the 
> American market or European.
> This manual originated for a US-made product so it started life with 
> 8.5x11 (US-letter size) pages. And it didn't even occur to me that it 
> might need to be A4-sized for the European market.
>
> Is there a good way to switch back and forth between A4 and 8.5x11 
> page sizes, depending on which version of a book you want to print?
>
> I have the sneaking suspicion that I will have to break this into two 
> separate books, but I figured I'd ask to see if anyone had 
> recommendations.
>
> Thanks,
> Lise
> -- 
> *Save the earth.* It's the only planet with chocolate.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> You are currently subscribed to framers as shuttie27 at gmail.com.
>
> Send list messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com.
>
> To unsubscribe send a blank email to
> framers-unsubscribe at lists.frameusers.com
> or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/shuttie27%40gmail.com
>
> Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com. Visit
> http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.frameusers.com/pipermail/framers-frameusers.com/attachments/20130221/ef53f7c5/attachment.htm>