Page layouts and templates

A page layout is the arrangement every page of your book shares: where the artwork sits, whether it has a border, where the caption or the story text goes, and whether pages carry numbers.

Picking one

The layout is chosen in one place: the Page layout section of the premise. The page plan and the page designer both say which layout the book uses and link back to it.

The gallery offers layouts appropriate to your preset. A coloring book is not shown a habit tracker, and a planner is not shown a medallion frame. Choose one before you plan the pages and they arrive laid out in it; choose one later and it becomes the book's template: every design page is stamped with it. A layout's own options — a caption's height, each player's difficulty on a two-player puzzle page — sit under the gallery.

Once there are pages, picking a thumbnail only selects it. One button applies it and says how many pages it will redraw, and Undo is offered until you change anything else.

When a book has more than one template, Layout for chooses which pages you are choosing for. A puzzle book's answer pages are not chosen here: they have their own Solution layout under Answer key on the Premise.

A planner is chosen as a cycle of sections instead: each row is a page design and how many pages of it, and the cycle repeats. The page plan builds the pages from it.

The page plan's assistant can offer a layout too, as a card you accept — it does exactly what choosing it on the premise does.

Changing your mind is safe

Applying a different layout keeps what matters:

• Artwork moves into the new layout's frame — it is not lost and it is not re-charged.
• Text you actually wrote is carried across.
• Layers you added yourself are never touched.

What gets replaced is the furniture the previous layout put there. Placeholder text still showing a {token} is treated as the old template's seed, and the new template supplies its own.

Designing your own

The template is a real page you design, on the same canvas as any other, from scratch or starting from a built-in.

Open it from the premise's Edit this template in the designer link, or from the designer's Templates section. The designer moves and restyles the template's boxes; choosing a different built-in layout happens on the premise.

Starting from blank

The Templates row at the top of the page list ends in ＋ Blank template: an empty page to build on from nothing. A book with no template yet also offers ＋ Page template, which starts from the page you are standing on instead.

Puzzles in your own template

In a puzzle or activity book, a template's Add panel opens with Puzzles: one tile for each kind the book prints. A tile adds a whole puzzle, not just its grid:

Click a tile again for another puzzle on the same page, as many as the page holds. The puzzles are laid out evenly each time, like the built-in layouts: a grid with its number above it and its list beside or under it. Each one is numbered on its own (Puzzle 1, Puzzle 2…), takes its own words, and gets its own answer in the key. Arrange evenly lays them out again after you have moved or deleted some.

Word lists and clue lists go anywhere

A word search's word list, or a crossword's clue list, is its own box. Drag it anywhere on the page, for example all the lists in a row along the foot. It still prints its own puzzle's words. Once moved, it stays where you put it, and Arrange evenly lays the puzzles out around it.

• Selecting a list shows For: Puzzle 2, which says which puzzle it belongs to and lets you change it.
• Delete a list and the Word list (or Clue list) tile adds a fresh one for that puzzle, ready to place.

A template holds one kind of puzzle. Once it has one, the other kinds' tiles are greyed out. A page of mazes and word searches mixed would have one written over the other when it is generated, so start a second template for the other kind.

Placeholders

Ordinary layers that carry a role:

Because they are ordinary layers, the inspector already edits their font, size, colour and alignment. The role is what lets content survive a template change.

Borders are one layer

A double or triple frame is one border layer, not several rectangles you have to keep concentric by hand. Set the number of rules, their weight, the gap between them, style and corner radius.

Artwork is fitted inside the innermost rule automatically, so the picture does not print underneath the frame — which on a coloring page, where both are black, looks exactly like a mistake in the drawing.

Tokens

Text placeholders can carry tokens that resolve per page:

{page} · {pages} · {design} · {designs} · {title} · {author} · {section}

{page} and {design} are different numbers. In a book with a blank back to every design, the fourth design is printed sheet nine.

An unknown token is left alone so a typo is visible rather than silently blank.

Mirroring

A template is designed on a right-hand page and mirrors onto left-hand pages by default.

This is not cosmetic. The gutter is on the left of a recto and the right of a verso, so a layout copied verbatim puts its margin — and any page number in the outside corner — into the binding on every other page.

Turn mirroring off only for a deliberately asymmetric design.

The pages follow the template

Editing the template restamps the book automatically. There is no "apply to all" step to forget, and no second answer to "what does a page of this book look like".

It is safe because restamping is non-destructive: artwork, your words and your own layers all survive.

What to watch for

• The template is not a printed page. It does not appear in the page list, is not counted, and never prints.
• Applying a layout replaces its furniture; it does not wipe the page. Your own layers stay where they are, and nothing is duplicated: a title you typed over a layout with no title box is kept, and the next layout that has one puts it back in that box rather than printing a second title.
• Built-in layouts rebuild per page against that page's own geometry, so writing lines follow the gutter correctly on both sides. A hand-drawn template is projected as drawn — which is why mirroring exists.