The most important part of a diary are its dated pages (as opposed to information pages in the front and back). In Q++, dated pages are represented by GridTemplates.

 

A GridTemplate is a QuarkXPress file which shows the repeated pages of a diary layout, contains all the attributes (font, color, ...) of the final diary, but where information related to dates and languages is represented by tokens.

 

Most GridTemplates (daily, weekly or monthly) are made up of 2 pages, since most diaries' dated sections have a layout that repeats every 2 pages.

 

   

 

However GridTemplates of more than 2 pages are possible (for example 7 days on 6 pages as shown below).

 

   

 

The basic steps involved in creating a GridTemplate are :

 

 

We will cover these 2 steps in more detail below.

 

Getting a representative layout of the diary

 

Assuming a layout structure of 2 pages, there are 2 ways to obtain these 2 pages :

 

 

Generally the most representative layouts occur when there is a month change, as many aspects of the diary are onlly apparent when the month of the left page is not the same as the month of the right page (for example, the 2 different months may be displayed with a separator and/or in abbreviated form).

 

        

 

Although this is not required, we suggest that the GridTemplate always be setup so that odd pages are on the right, to make it easier to view the layout.

 

        

 

This can be achieved either by removing the "facing pages" attributes (above left), or by dragging page 2 to the right of page 1 (above right).

 

Converting the date and language dependent information

 

The next step is to look for every element of the layout that depends either on date or language, and convert it to a token.

 

Which individual token should be used for each element is described in detail in the chapter on tokens. Here we will discuss the general guidelines that you should follow when converting a layout with variable elements (dates and languages), to a GridTemplate, which contains references to DayValues and Language Tags, as shown below.

 

The essential principle is to leave the existing formatting intact, and only replace the textual part of variable elements with the corresponding token. Usually this can be done by first double-clicking on the variable element (which selects it as show below left) and then typing the token directly over this selection.

 

   

 

To avoid any problems with kerning, we suggest you first type the opening and closing braces, place the cursor in between and then type the body of the token.

 

       

 

Sometimes the token used to represent a variable element will be much larger than the actual variable element. This is often the case with dates 1-31, represented by the [d] token.

 

        

 

In those cases you can use a common trick that relies on the fact that only the attributes of the first character (the opening brace in most cases) count when Q++ replaces tokens by actual dates and translations. In the example above, we have reduced the font size of the 1d text from 36 to 12. The output generated will show the date in size 36, because that is the font size of the opening brace.

 

While replacing variable elements by tokens, you will often be referring to the 2 following topics :

 

 

If you encounter problems with the structure of the layout, possibly done by an outside party, then you should refer to Basic Guidelines of GridTemplate Design.

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Topic 172030 updated on 07-May-05 Topic URL: http://www.qppsupport.net/webhelp/index.html?creatingagridtemplate.htm