Example: Replicate page template level formatting

The page template level formatting is often used in InDesign- or Xpress-based systems.

You use a page template to create, by copying from, a new production page. The new production page inherits all the text formatting styles of the selected page template.

The styles are not shape-based, but they are common to all the shapes. Therefore, when formatting any page element, e.g. the body text, you see all the styles, e.g. also the headline styles.

GN4 natively uses the formatting break down to the level of the article element (head, body, subhead etc.).

On the following screenshot you see an article layout in which the kicker frame has the TL Kicker 32 Red format, the headline frame has the TL Head 30 format, the subhead frame has DE Subhead format, and so on.

In every GN4 article, the formatting can be different. Therefore, a page with 7 articles that contain 30 elements can have up to 210 different formats!

This approach has been chosen because the GN4 is not the paper production centric, therefore, the formats are not tied to a page. Assigning formatting to article elements makes the content formatting more neutral - the same formatting element can be interpreted in a different way in each publishing channel.

You can simulate the page template level formatting in GN4 by organizing the formats properly.

This solution requires more formats, but it reduces the number of styles that are available at any time to only the styles pertinent to the article element you are editing. Therefore, when formatting any page element, e.g. the body text, you will see only the styles related to that element, e.g. you won't see the headline styles.

1.First, make a list of all the page templates you want to simulate. In this example, let's assume you want to simulate four page templates: News, Sports, Features, Frontpage.

2.Make a list of all the styles you want to have for a given page template, breaking it down by the article elements, e.g. put together all the styles for headline, but separate them from those for body, pull quotes etc. In this example, we will assume there are 5 headline styles in News, 4 headline styles in Sports, and so on. We will also assume there are 3 body styles in News, 7 in Sports and so on. Assuming you have 4 templates to simulate, 5 elements in an article, and 5 styles for each element, you will end up with 100 styles all together.

3.Create a new style library for each match of template-element, e.g. one style library for News Headlines, another for News Body, the third one for Sports Headline, the fourth one for Sports Body etc. Assuming you have 4 templates to simulate and 5 elements in an article, you will end up with 20 new style libraries.

4.Create the required styles in the mentioned libraries or copy them from the existing style libraries.

5.Create a new format for each match of template-element, e.g. one format for News Headlines, another for News Body, the third one for Sports Headline, the fourth one for Sports Body etc. Assuming you have 4 templates to simulate and 5 elements in an article, you will end up with 20 new formats. The names of the formats have to reflect the name of the page templates, e.g. News, Sports etc.

6.In each new format, set correctly the defaults, and then assign the appropriate style library from the list mentioned in step #3.

7.Set the appropriate type for each format, e.g. assign it to head, body or other designated article element.

8.In the page template object library, assign the appropriate formats to all the article layout frames.