Glossary tables

[geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA]

 John Forsyth wondered how to make a glossary/table in
 Pagemaker (PM), with the text in two columns that align
 perfectly. He gave the example:
        Glossary entry 1        Definition here
                                and here
        Glossary entry 2        Defintion here

 If I'm understanding this right, you want the second line
 of the definition to wrap around and align under the first
 line, right? Assuming that each of the glossary entries is
 only one line, here are two thoughts:

 PM simply doesn't have a usable table editor. The easiest
 way to do tables in PM is to use tabs. Insert a tab between
 the last letter of the glossary entry and the first letter
 of the definition for each name/definition pair. Then
 create a style called "Glossary" that wraps the text on the
 secondline to the appropriate tab position. If you're using
 lines in the table, you may have to insert them manually.
 The paragraph styles do let you set rules above and below
 each paragraph, but it's not very flexible and doesn't let
 you do vertical lines. Nonetheless, I got really fast at
 doing this sort of layout, and you will too with practice.

 If you've already done the work of formatting the table in
 Word, it might be easier simply to print the table to disk
 as an EPS file, then import it into PageMaker... much less
 cleanup required. But pick a really hairy table to use as a
 test... I've no idea how well Word handles EPS exports
 (i.e., how well it behaves in instructing the printer
 driver to generate the EPS). If you link the files to PM
 and set the software to check the files for updates, you
 can edit the files in Word, reprint the EPS files, and have
 PM automatically reimport the latest version.

 If you've got tons of tables to do, you might be better off
 switching to Frame or Ventura. Much though I love PM, it's
 got a long list of faults (as of version 6). (Attention,
 Adobe: In 1997, no DTP software should be without automatic
 footnotes... word processors have done this since at least
 1984, and it's an embarrassing omission.)

 --Geof Hart     @8^{)}     geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
 Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.

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