Create article template

Build 1501 on 14/Nov/2017  This topic last edited on: 24/Oct/2016, at 18:30

Use the Pages main tab in Fred to create article templates, i.e. articles that keep their geometry even when unlinked from a page.

Reporters use such articles to write to fit even when the page layout is not yet ready.

Important: the article template geometry is created in the same region of the page where you made it. Should you need to have the same geometry in more regions, you need to paginate the template on a page in that region, save, and unlink by means of the Articles menu, point to Link and then click Unlink and keep geometry.

Click to toggle expandCreate an article template (version 2.1 and newer)

1.Run Fred4, and then on the Pages main tab open a scrap page.

2.Design all the frames for the template - headline and column frames, and/or picture boxes.

3.Apply formats on every first frame of the article elements.

4.On the Articles menu, click the New Article Template.

5.Accept the proposed template name, or change it at will. Note: the name is composed of the number of columns (1col, 2col etc), number of images (1pic, 2pic etc) and number of estimated body words (W230 etc).

6.Click OK and then wait the creation to finish (few seconds).

7.Close the confirmation message.

Notes

•This procedure leaves the article layout you used temporarily in an unlinked state, so you can use it for the next template variation.

•You cannot apply this procedure on linked frames: create a fresh article layout, or unlink frames before calling it.

•Before clicking New Article template, make sure you have an article layout already designed on page, with formats applied.

•The warning is displayed if there are some frames that have J format assigned, instead of element specific format. The J format is considered as 'not specific. You can add more formats to be considered as such, to the EditorialConfig line glbUnassignedFormats.

•The script checks only the fist frame of the body, but it checks all frames of photocaptions, for example. You can add more element names to be checked in every frame to the EditorialConfig line glbEltsToCheckAllInstances.

•The body words estimating takes into accounts the frames cut or shortened by the runaround of the overlapping images/captions.

•The predefined name is constructed as CStr(ncolsobj) & "col" & sPics & "W" & sWrds where ncolsobj is number of columns the object has, sPics appears only if the object contains picture placeholders (e.g. 1pic, 2pic), and the last element of the name is number of words, preceded by the W letter.
Click to toggle expandCreate an article template (version 2.0 and previous)
1.Run Fred4, and then on the Pages main tab open a scrap page.
2.Design all the frames for the template - headline and column frames, and/or picture boxes.
3.Create a new article in the folder for the article templates and assign the appropriate typographical format to all its elements - this article is your new template.
4.Link the template elements to frames.
5.Test the template by writing some sample headline and body text into frame to check the formatting.
6.When ready, remove the sample text and optionally leave only the placeholders
7.On the Articles menu, point to Link and then click Unlink and keep geometry.
8.Save the page.
9.Close the page and exit Fred4, or delete the frames on page and restart with the step #2.

_noteNotes

•Ted4 users can use File/New article by template to make new article based on template.

•To paginate an article, created by template, insert it on page in usual way, and when prompted confirm you want to insert local geometry.

•Article templates make sense only for the GN4 users who write text in the Text Editor Ted4. If they write text while making pages directly in Fred4, they don't need such templates - use library objects instead.

•Before creating templates, ensure that you have all the typographical formats ready, that you have a folder ready to put the templates there. All the GN4 users except template makers and administrators should have only view and read rights on template folders. Administrators and template makers must have all rights.

•As it is not possible to preview the article templates when creating an article from it, it is recommended to name article templates in the way they are easily recognizable, e.g. 2c1p200w may mean template on 2 columns, with 1 picture, 200 words capacity.