Style for Journal entries

[thewitt]

Hi,

 

I'm just starting to play with styles.

 

I would like to format each section in a journal format similar to this:

 

Date

Location

Weather

 

Content of the journal.

 

 

The header in the top right would be in a font like Arial or Courier. The journal content in a script font to resemble handwritten notes.

 

Whenever I start a new section, it should be on a new page in the finished book, with the same information in the right corner (no labels, just the data).

 

Can I do this with a style sheet?

 

I also need to be able to export to eBook format and preserve the formatting.

 

Possible? Suggestions? Am I trying to do too much with styles?

 

Thanks,

 

-t

 

(null)

[thewitt]

Arghhhh. The formatting was removed from my post. The Date, Location and Weather would be right aligned on the top of the page.

[marguerite]

Hi, thewitt:

You can create the formatting with styles. I can't give exact directions right now because I'm at work, but it's possible. To create a new page with each section, set the Date style to begin on a new page—assuming it is always the first tag. (Tip: to format forum messages, use the controls above the message window while you're typing the message.)

 

Once you have one section set up as you want it, before adding text, choose Save as Template from the File menu and give it a name (Journal, say). Then you can keep the style sheet for future use.

 

Keeping the formatting during e-book export is more complicated, because e-books are designed to be as simple as possible. Page breaks, italics, and bold usually remain; fonts definitely don't (an important feature of e-books is that users set the font); alignments sometimes do and sometimes don't.

 

Steve has posted instructions somewhere on editing the e-book files after export, but it seems a bit complicated. There is a free program called Sigil designed just for that task, however.

Good luck!

Marguerite

[Steve]

Hi thewitt,

 

To add to what Marguerite said:

 

You can certainly set up styles to accomplish what you want to do for manuscripts that you print or export as PDF. You'll want to set a tab stop somewhere near the right margin for the date/location/weather as in the attached screenshot.

 

However, if an ebook is your ultimate goal, you'll probably want to opt for simple right-alignment. Right-alignment will survive the conversion to HTML (which both ePub and Kindle use as a starting point), but tab stops will not. As Marguerite mentioned, you can edit the resulting ePub file with Sigil (if you're comfortable with HTML), but you'll need to test on all the eBook platforms you're interested in.

 

-Steve

 

[thewitt]

Thank you both.

 

I'll play around with this and see where I can take it.

 

It appears from poking around that I can embed custom fonts in eBooks, but that the user can override them if they want. I'm OK with that. If I provide a handwritten font for the journal portion, and they decide they would rather read it in a standard font I'm ok.

 

I am a web designer and system engineer so I'm ok with editing HTML, though I've not played around with the ePub files yet.

 

First things first I'll set up the style sheet template in Storyist and write the book... Then I'll worry about eBook presentations.

 

Thanks again

[thewitt]

Ok, I've been playing around with this, and it seems like I need 3 styles to control the formatting:

 

A style for the date field, which starts on a new page and is right justified.

 

A style for the next 2-3 lines that right justifies any additional lines with no additional spaces between paragraphs.

 

A style for the body that changes font, left justifies and keeps the space between paragraphs.

 

Is this correct?

[marguerite]

Sounds right to me!

Best,

M