General Project Settings

Project Settings on the left rail holds the defaults for the whole book. Anything set here applies everywhere unless a Local Setting overrides it for one particular paragraph, table, or figure.

The panel is a list of sections; several have their own chapter in this tutorial.

Template

Change Template swaps the book's design, and the Sections list below it lets you leave out individual parts the template supplies. See Templates and Boilerplate.

General

Project-wide document settings:

  • Watermark — text stamped across every page, for drafts.
  • Cover and Back Cover — the cover images.
  • Template — turn this project into a publishable template.

Page Layout

The physical shape of the book:

  • Page Width and Page Height
  • Top Margin and Bottom Margin
  • Inside Margin and Outside Margin — inside is the binding edge, so these swap over between left- and right-hand pages
  • Header Ascent and Footer Descent — how far the running head and foot sit into the margin
  • Bleed — extra area beyond the trim edge for images that run off the page; your printer will tell you what they need
  • Font Size — the base size everything else is measured against

Paragraphs

Every built-in paragraph style, each with its own settings, plus any custom styles you have created. See Paragraphs and Other Content Styles.

Custom Text Styles

Character-level styles you define yourself and apply to selected text — a font for quotations, a colour, a highlight. Each can be renamed and given a full font treatment. Useful when the same treatment recurs throughout a book, because changing the style updates every use of it.

How hyperlinks are rendered in the built book.

Table of Contents and List of Figures

Layout and formatting for the two generated listings. See Table of Contents.

Headings

One subsection per heading level — Part Title, Chapter Title, Section, Subsection, and Subsubsection — each with its own numbering, fonts, spacing, and layout. There is also a setting to restart chapter numbering under each part. See Chapter Titles, Parts, and Section Headings.

Appendices

How the appendices after the body are lettered. An appendix is styled like a chapter — the fonts and spacing come from Chapter Title above — so only the counting is set here:

  • Numbered — whether appendices are lettered at all.
  • Numbering — the scheme. Alphabetic (Uppercase) by default, which gives A, B, C.
  • Label — the word printed before the letter, "Appendix". This is also what you type to reference one, so renaming it to "Annex" changes both.
  • Separator — what comes after the letter, before the title. ". " by default.
  • Label in Contents — the word used in the table of contents entry, which can differ from the one on the page.

See Chapter Titles, Parts, and Section Headings.

Page Numbers

  • Enabled — whether page numbers appear at all.
  • Roman Numerals for Front Matter — numbers the front matter i, ii, iii and restarts at 1 for the body, which is the usual convention for books.
  • Start At — the number on the first numbered page, any whole number from 0 up, for a volume that continues the paging of an earlier one, or a section printed on its own. With Roman Numerals for Front Matter on it is the body that starts here instead, and the front matter still runs from i. Left- and right-hand pages follow the number, so starting on an even one puts the wide binding margin where that page expects it.
  • Position — where on the page they sit.

Margin Mark

A mark running up the outside of every page — a journal abbreviation, a series name, a small logo. Edit Template opens the same editor the running heads use, so the mark can be literal text, a variable such as the book title or the page number, an image, or a mix.

  • Edge — Outer keeps the mark on the outside of the page, so it swaps sides between left- and right-hand pages the way the running head does. Inner puts it on the binding side instead, and Always Left / Always Right pin it to one physical side.
  • Vertical Position and Distance From Top — where along the edge it sits. With the position set to Top or Bottom the distance runs from that edge; with Center it runs from the middle of the page, and 0 leaves the mark centred.
  • Reading Direction — whether the text reads downwards or upwards.
  • Distance From Edge — how far in from the trimmed edge of the paper.

Both distances are measured from the trim, which is the edge the reader sees, so a book with a bleed needs no arithmetic of its own.

The mark prints on every page, including full-page images, but not on the cover. It is a printed-page feature: an EPUB has no margins to put it in, so it appears in the PDF only.

Replacing the variable in the template

The template opens with the book's title already in it, as a variable — a chip with a dashed border rather than ordinary text. A chip is a single object: click it and it is selected whole, and the next thing you type replaces it. So to put your own words in the margin, click the chip and type. To swap it for a different variable, click it and pick one from Insert → Variable in the toolbar.

A margin mark can hold the book title, the chapter title, the part title, the page number, and any variable you have defined on the details page — an ISSN, a series name. A variable you have defined but not yet filled in prints nothing, rather than an error. A chip naming something the template cannot fill in is underlined in red in the editor and prints as [Invalid variable: …] on the page; that happens when the variable it names has been deleted.

Headers and Footers

Running heads and feet are laid out in a template. Edit Template opens a small editor showing the header and footer as they will appear, and you lay them out directly — typing fixed text and dropping in variables such as the chapter title, the book title, or the page number.

This is why it is worth defining variables on the details page: they can be placed into the running head here rather than retyped. A running head takes the same variables a margin mark does, and warns about a chip it cannot fill in the same way — see Replacing the variable in the template above, which applies to this editor too.

The template is laid out in three slots across the page: one at each edge and one in the middle. The middle one sits on the centre line of the page and stays there, so a running head placed in it lines up with itself on left- and right-hand pages no matter how wide the page number beside it grows. The two edge slots share whatever is left over.

Chapters

What happens at a chapter boundary:

  • Show Chapter Title — whether the title is printed.
  • New Page — run straight on, start on a new page, or start on the next even or odd page. Articles run straight on whatever this says, so that a paper cannot be restyled into a book — appendices are the exception, and honour it.
  • Columns — the number of text columns.
  • Drop Cap — an enlarged opening capital.
  • Headers and Footers — whether running heads and feet appear on chapter openings.
  • Headpiece and Tailpiece — decorative images at the start and end of a chapter. Once set, they appear faded in the editor above the title and after the last paragraph, so you can see at a glance which chapters carry one. Click either to open that chapter's own settings for it, where you can change or remove it for just that chapter. When a chapter ends in an ordinary paragraph, its tailpiece never sits alone at the top of a page in the PDF: the paragraph's last line moves over with it.

Notes, Annotations

The two independent note families, each with its own placement, markers, and layout. See Footnotes/Endnotes and Annotations.

Citations

  • Citation Style — the CSL style used for citations and the bibliography.
  • Condense Subsequent Citations — after the first full citation of a work, use the shortened form.

See Citations and Bibliography.

Math, Figures, Tables, Lists

Defaults for each kind of content: equation numbering; figure captions, labels, and float behaviour; the default table style preset and float settings; and the numbering and alignment of Numbered Lists and Bullet Lists. Each has its own chapter.

➔ Annotations

Local Settings ➔