Screen alignment helper lines

> I cannot remember what this feature is called ...

Guides

I doubt that FM has added it since FM9 (which is the highest I've used).

FM does have Rulers and Grid, enabled through the View menu.

Unfortuantely FM doesn't have any true guidelines available as in ID or even Acrobat.

However, you can create your own that can be toggled on/off with a simple shortcut.

The first step is to use FM's View > Color > Definitions... to create a new colour (I typically just use Magenta) and give it a name "Guides" (or whatever you want).

Then use FM's View > Color > Views... to define View 6 to have the Guides set to be Invisible.

Now you can use FM's drawing tools (line tool) to position horizontal and vertical guidelines using the "Guides" colour. Use the shift key to constrain the darwing movement to horizintal or vericatl when drawing the guides.

If you draw these guidelines on your Master pages, they will be available on all document pages that use the respective Master page.

To toggle the guidelines ON (i.e. visible) use <esc> v 1 and to toggle OFF use <esc> v 6. (These toggles also work at the book level for all files at once.)

You have to hold down the Shift to draw a perfectly straight horizontal or vertical line.

Using the colour views toggles the guideline on or off. When it is off (i.e. invisible) you never see it nor does it print. Treat these as FM's "layers".

You can also use the Gravity option to have items jump to the guides.

I do this all of the time for graphics intensive catalogs.

> Getting it perfectly straight was tricky ...

In addition to Shift+draw, you can also just take your best shot, then set the Width or Height to 0.0 in Graphics Properties. That dialog also let's you position the line precisely on the page.