[Framers] middle (vertical) alignment in table cell ?

[Peter Gold]

I don't have FM running, but working from long-term memory, IIRC, I think
the issue is that FM can't apply negative Line Space (AKA baseline shift)
text property in the paragraph or character designer. HOWEVER, it can be
set in MIF. Details in the MIF Reference. Again, IIRC, the setting holds
unless the designer is used on the named format, and it's lost. If you can
get this to work, consider saving the block of MIF, so you can copy/paste
it whenever you need it.

You want a pleasing optical vertical centering, not a calculated center.
So, a couple of strategies that might avoid the MIF method:

* Apply a "tall" character format to a non-printing character, like a
space, that appears in the text. This should force the vertical-centering
calculation to display the text lower than the paragraph format's normal
position, unless this doesn't work in a table cell.

* Create a run-in paragraph format to precede the problematic text's
paragraph. The vertical-centering algorithm may give you the control you
want.

I don't think I've seen you state whether the problematic text is a single
line paragraph. I'm not sure how these strategies would work in a
wrap-around paragraph. And, I'm guessing that the problem is that the text
appears above the optical center, so you want to lower it.

* Create an unconnected text frame with the Text Frame tool in the graphics
toolbox. Create a character format for it (it won't accept a paragraph
format, and might not respond to spell check.) Copy and paste it into the
table cell. You'll have a bunch of tweaking options to experiment with.

Now, since you're working with a designer whose got a sophisticated sense,
listen carefully to see if she or he has whispered "InDesign can do this
without breaking a sweat." If so, perhaps this is the time to think about a
new authoring tool.<G>

HTH

On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 1:29 PM, Monique Semp <monique.semp at earthlink.net>
wrote:

> > I cannot seem to get the text to be precisely vertically centered. It’s
> *almost* centered, and clearly is not Top, Bottom, or As Is. But *almost*
> centered is *not* centered. (No, users probably won’t notice. But I notice,
> and our design person has noticed and asked me to fix it.)
>
> SOLVED (sorta), with the help of off-list replies and lots of
> experimentation, so I'd like to summarize.
>
> I’ve concluded that FrameMaker is absolutely centering the text: it's
> apparently creating equal space above the ascender (to the cell top) and
> below the descender (to the cell bottom), which certainly means that the
> text is centered. But… we humans (or at least, I) tend to focus on the cap
> height, and expect that to be centered in the cell. And so the vertical
> centering *appears* off.
>
> (I sure wish that I could confirm that this is exactly what FrameMaker is
> doing, but I cannot find it via typical google. Perhaps this is part of the
> deep web, but perhaps it’s that Adobe doesn’t publicize this info.)
>
> So now the question is, do I stick with the accurate placement that
> FrameMaker produces or do I manually adjust things so that the cap height
> (or some other specific typography part ?) *appears* centered in the cell?
> I’m not sure yet, and I’ve tossed that question back to the picky designer
> :-).
>
> And to complete the thought, such manual fudging can be done many ways:
> adding “spacer” blocks to the Reference Page and then applying them as the
> paragraph style’s Frame Above (and therefore not needing to use a table
> cell at all); changing the paragraph style’s space above/below; changing
> the table cell’s margins; and likely other solutions. And they’d all need
> to be adjusted if the font face or size changed.
>
> Always something new to learn in FrameMaker, that’s for sure!
> -Monique
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