So you are designing the first of oh, let's say, 500 tables in a FrameMaker book. You are knee deep in Table Designer, trying to come up with a nice clean way to present your tabular data. You get to the Ruling property sheet of the Table Designer, and just don't like any of the standard choices: None, Double, Medium, Thick, Thin, Very Thin. What's a designer to do?
A little known fact about table rules is that they live in the Custom Ruling & Shading Dialog box. If you don't like the ones you see you can either change them or add new ones. It's this easy:
- Choose Table > Custom Ruling & Shading.
- Select a rule from the Apply Ruling Style list and then click the Edit Ruling Style button.
- If you'd like to simply change an existing rule, pick a new color, pen pattern or line width (or if you'd like to preserve the default rules and add a new one, type in a new name and then pick a new color, pen pattern or line width).
- Click Set.
The next time you look at the drop down lists in Table Designer, your new and/or improved choices will be there!
Need some more help with FrameMaker? I've got an online Introduction to FrameMaker 9 class coming up October 22-23, 2009. Sign up today.
About the author: Barbara Binder is the president and founder of Rocky Mountain Training. Barbara has been a trainer for nearly two decades and was recently recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide for 2007.