Wrap words round a picture, a chart or a table, as in Word

A picture dropped into a document usually sits on a line of its own, with the words stopping above it and starting again below. That is fine for a report, but a newsletter, a flyer or a school notice looks better with the picture beside the words, the way magazines do it. In Word that is called wrapping text. Scriptorium has the same Layout options, with the same names, and they work on the page, in the Pages view, on paper, in the PDF and in the web page alike.

Choose how the words go round it

Click the picture to choose it. A small toolbar appears over it, and the Picture Format tab appears on the ribbon. The Layout options are in two places: the button with the wrapped lines on the small toolbar, and Wrap text on Picture Format.

Left, middle or right

The first three buttons on the small toolbar, also on Picture Format as On the left, In the middle and On the right, choose the side the picture keeps to. With Square, a picture on the right has the words on its left, as in the newsletter above, and a picture on the left has them on its right. A picture leaves the line from the side it stood on, and keeps the size it had.

Move it, and size it

Once a picture is out of the line, drag it anywhere you want it, or drag the hand on its small toolbar. The arrow keys nudge it a little at a time, and with Shift, ten times as far. Its corners still make it bigger or smaller, and the words make room as it grows. Width and Height on Picture Format set an exact size.

Move with text, or fix it on the page

Under the seven options are Move with text and Fix position on page. A picture that moves with the text stays with the paragraph it belongs to: add a paragraph above it, and it moves down with its own. A picture fixed on its page stays exactly where you put it on that page, whatever happens to the words: a logo in a corner, or a bar code at the foot of a delivery note.

Only a picture behind or in front of the words can be fixed on its page. A picture that the words run round has to go with them, or they would run round an empty space.

Charts, diagrams, bar codes, tables and Word Art too

Everything that is drawn in a document has the same Layout options, on a small toolbar of its own when it is chosen, with a hand to drag it:

• Charts, graphs, diagrams and bar codes. A chart or diagram out of the line can also be dragged by itself or nudged with the arrow keys, and changing it in its box keeps its place.
• Tables: click in the table, and its small toolbar appears.
• Shapes and Word Art, where Tight and Through run the words round the letters themselves.
• A drawing canvas, chosen by clicking its empty space.

In the Markdown

A Scriptorium document is a plain Markdown file, and the layout is written in it in words you can read. A picture keeps it in its own line, with the rest of its settings:

{picture:frame wrap=square side=right w=320 h=240}
![A lighthouse at sunset](lighthouse.jpg =320 "The evening walk ends at the lighthouse.")

A picture moved out of its place has at=12,30 too, and one fixed on its page pin. A table has the same words in its {table:...} line, and a chart, graph or bar code has lines of its own in its block, such as wrap: square and side: right. Another Markdown program shows that line as words above the picture, and the picture in the line, so nothing is lost.

On paper, in the PDF and on the web

The page you write on, the Pages view, the printed pages, the PDF and the web page all place a picture in the same way, so what you see while you write is what prints. Word, OpenDocument and RTF files keep pictures in the line of text for now, so a document sent as a Word file is tidy, with each picture on a line of its own.