Glossary tables

Subject: Glossary tables
From: geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 12:17:38 -0500

John Forsyth wondered how to make a glossary/table in
Pagemaker (PM), with the text in two columns that align
perfectly. He gave the example:
Glossary entry 1 Definition here
and here
Glossary entry 2 Defintion here

If I'm understanding this right, you want the second line
of the definition to wrap around and align under the first
line, right? Assuming that each of the glossary entries is
only one line, here are two thoughts:

PM simply doesn't have a usable table editor. The easiest
way to do tables in PM is to use tabs. Insert a tab between
the last letter of the glossary entry and the first letter
of the definition for each name/definition pair. Then
create a style called "Glossary" that wraps the text on the
secondline to the appropriate tab position. If you're using
lines in the table, you may have to insert them manually.
The paragraph styles do let you set rules above and below
each paragraph, but it's not very flexible and doesn't let
you do vertical lines. Nonetheless, I got really fast at
doing this sort of layout, and you will too with practice.

If you've already done the work of formatting the table in
Word, it might be easier simply to print the table to disk
as an EPS file, then import it into PageMaker... much less
cleanup required. But pick a really hairy table to use as a
test... I've no idea how well Word handles EPS exports
(i.e., how well it behaves in instructing the printer
driver to generate the EPS). If you link the files to PM
and set the software to check the files for updates, you
can edit the files in Word, reprint the EPS files, and have
PM automatically reimport the latest version.

If you've got tons of tables to do, you might be better off
switching to Frame or Ventura. Much though I love PM, it's
got a long list of faults (as of version 6). (Attention,
Adobe: In 1997, no DTP software should be without automatic
footnotes... word processors have done this since at least
1984, and it's an embarrassing omission.)

--Geof Hart @8^{)} geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.

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