In the old Corel Ventura, it was easy to add a line (technically a "rule") above and below a selected paragraph. I cannot find a way to do that in CorelDraw.
I've inserted a column of text in a text frame and then separated two lines of it with a carriage return. Now I want to highlight just those two lines by placing a horizontal rule above the first line (width of the column, not just the text), plus another horizontal rule below the bottom line. I may also need to add distance between the rules and the lines of text (space above and below the text).
This is a typical way of inserting call-out quotes in a column of text. Can anyone give me instructions on how it might be done in CorelDraw?
If the only way to do this is the put the two lines in their own text box, then how would I specify that the frame should have rules only across the top and bottom, not all four sides of the frame?
Thanks.
I'm not aware of a good way to do this. Importing some HTML containing <hr> ought to work, but X6 silently drops the rule.
You can insert a series of EM dashes with text > insert formatting code (or alt-underscore) until you fill the column width, but it looks poor on screen and might not print any better.
But ... it is possible to paste a bit image into text, which is how I did this ...
Try this first with an after-paragraph spacing of 150%. You can adjust it later.
You must create an image which has the same height as your paragraph text size and its width must be slightly narrower than the column. Getting the size right is important, because if the image is wider than the column, CorelDraw will not be able to wrap it into the column and will not display anything from that point on. But equally, if the height is too small, CorelDraw will proportionally scale the image up to match the size of the font, making the width too wide for the column.
But you will probably not want a line as thick as the text height. Consequently, your image must include some white space above and below the rule. To clarify that, here's what it looks like against a grey background:
Of course, if you were actually setting against a coloured background your would need to use a transparent image (eg PNG) of the correct size but with no white.
Possibly also, you might want to use a different image before and after the quote, so that the lines could be closer.
This not an ideal method and it is both inflexible and fiddly to get the sizes right, but I think it can be made to work.
Thank you for the detailed response. I appreciate the time you spent on it.
This page layout effect is a basic one that should have been included in CorelDraw. I'm really surprised that people have not pushed to have it added.