Friday, November 7, 2008

Answer to Mimic Question from DocTrain East Workshop on Nov. 1

Let's say that you create a text caption box in a Mimic movie frame, add some text that includes a variable, and size the text caption box so that its borders fit tightly around the text. Furthermore, let's say that the value of the variable is "ABC".

If you then change the value of the variable to a longer entry, such as "MadCap Software, Inc.", might some text be pushed outside the borders of the text caption box? Yes.

If so, how do I fix this to be sure that all the text fits inside the borders of the box? You have to adjust the size of each text caption box by hand. A better solution is to size each text caption box whose text contains that variable so that all the text will appear inside the box when the variable's value is set to the longest possible entry - e.g. "MadCap Software, Inc." This way, you know that all the text will appear in the box when you use shorter variable values. There will be some excess white space in the box, but you won't run the risk of having to modify the size of the box every time you change the value of the variable.

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