Creating lines for answers in a workbook

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Ewac

Hello,
I am going to make a workbook, in which the reader is supposed to write the answers to the questions on the respective lines in the workbook. I am looking for the best option to create these lines and I haven't found anyone talking about this so far.
I did a similar project before and ended up creating a seperate character style that is underlined and put lot's of spaces to create the lines. But it wasn't a very smooth solution I thought there should be a better way to do it. I will have more workbook projects in the future and would appreciate any help to find a good way to do this.
Thanks in advance for any help.

utnik

hi ewac

you should use 'patterns' for your lines.

  • create a set of your lines (or just the baseline, if you like) and a rectangle (or vertical line) without a color to define the vertical distance between your lines
  • select the line set and the rectangle
  • with'item' → 'send to' → 'patterns' you make it available in 'properties' → 'colors' → 'fill' for your whole document.
if you need the same patterns in different documents, i would consider to create a template with them...

utnik

Ewac

Thank you so much for the reply!
If I understand your solution correctly, that would only work for lager areas that are supposed to be equally filled with lines. I'm not sure how to apply that to my document(s).
The lines usually start right after the question. Some are long, some are short, some go over multiple rows, most are supposed to go all the way to the margin for a smooth look.
The screenshot shows an example, those lines were created by the author with an underline score. Not much formatting has been done yet.

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RobSay

Two options to consider:

1. Paragraph style with tab stops
Edit > Styles >  New > Paragraph Style
Tabs and Indentation: Add a tab stop (click on the ruler)
Set the Tab to be 'Right', set the position to your margin width
Set the fill character to be dot or underscore ...
Hit Done
Apply this paragrpah style to the 'questions' you want to have a user submission part - after the text hit 'tab' .


2. Manual lines
Create your text - don't add anything for where the answers are going to go
Insert > Line
Draw a line on the page (doesn't matter if it's not horizontal)
Properties: set the rotation to 0.0
Move your line to where you want it (use align to margins). If a line is too long or too short, select the line, hold the Ctrl* key and drag the start anchor where you need it
If you want to get fancy and have all lines equally spaced out (I would - the human eye is remarkably sensitive to misalignment)

  • Draw one line .. place it in line with the top most question
  • copy and paste the line .. for was many times as you have text lines on the page
  • move one of the lines to the bottom most text line
  • select all of the lines (but not the text frame)
  • Align and Distribute > Distribute > Make vertical gaps equal
  • Align and Distribute > Align > To Margins > Align right
  • Delete any 'line' you don't need. adjust length of lines as above

* Ctrl key on windows .. locks the resizing to specific grid, makes it easy to keep horizontal, don't what the key is on Linux

Ewac

Thank you, Rob, for the ideas.
Manual lines seem like a complicated solution, as the lines will have to be aligned to the margins as well as the text lines and the distance between the question and the beginning of the line should also be equal.

I gave your first solution a try, but can't seem to make it work. Nothing happens. Maybe I'm missing something in the way I set up the tab stop. See screenshot. (I have tried it without the bullet list and also tried it with english text, just to see if that makes a difference, but no).


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RobSay

You're nearly there!

The problem here is the total width of the paragraph line is less than 119 mm so the tab is to wide for that frame - try setting the tab position to 80mm OR just make the frame wider and you should see the tabs appearing.

Ewac

Still not working...Khmer or English, neither works.

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RobSay

Hmm - can't really suggest anything else at this point.

I've attached an example SLA with two text frames, one in English, one in Khmer (from here: https://r12a.github.io/scripts/khmer/) and both are using right tabs will fills.

Tabs are defined in the styles - the second one is at 120mm, right and fill = dot
1. Right Filled Tab Example Style: Arial
2. Right Filled Tab Example Khmer font Style: Khmer Regular (standard Google one .. you might need to substitute if you use something else)

cheers

Rob

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utnik

well, there's something strange with the right tab stop.
when you put it exactly at the righthand edge of the frame, it only works without a paragraph or line break. but if you move your tab stop a tenth of a millimeter to the left, it will work with the breaks.
...and there may be an issue with tabs after spaces (at least there once was...) if it doesn't work, try to generate your lines (hit the tab key) and insert the blanks later.

utnik

Ewac

It finally worked! To be honest, I'm not completely sure how or why, I was just desperately changing random settings.
Following utniks last comment I set the tab as close as possible to the edge of the frame, trying by the tenth of millimeters how far I can go, without it  creating a line break. For the first point that has two answer lines, I added a zero width space at the end of the line to create a line break without taking away from the length of the line and then continued with tab (because a regular line break would create another bullet point). I then manually set a left tab for the second line to match the beginning with the line above.

If this continues to work well, I have found my solution for creating the lines. If not, I'll pick the topic up again later  ;D

Thank you for your help! It is much appreciated.

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