iWork '05: The Missing Manual

Chapter 7. Streamline Your Projects—Creating Templates

You've undoubtedly used—and come to appreciate—Pages' timesaving templates. They range from very simple, like the Classic Letter, to the complex, multipage layouts of the various newsletters. But whether plain or intricate, they all share the same purpose: to get you started on a document quickly, with a large part of the formatting already in place—so you can concentrate on the content instead of the layout. This chapter shows you how to make your own templates so you can add them to Pages' built-in templates roster you learned about on page 1.

Understanding Template Attributes

Every Pages template—actually every Pages document—contains an array of formatting attributes that instruct Pages how to display the various document components. When designing a template, you can choose to leave these attributes in their standard, or default, state, or you can modify any or all of them:

• Page size and orientation. The paper size and whether the document is vertical (portrait) or horizontal (landscape).

• Page margins. The margins on the sides, top, and bottom of the page and the header and footer areas.

• Page numbering. Whether or not the document contains footnotes or page numbers, and their placement and formatting.

• Background images. Graphics, watermarks, or other master objects that appear on every page.

• Text styles. A collection of character and paragraph styles, including list and table-of-contents styles.

• Fill and stroke styles ...