Composition Zones Continued
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Composition Zone Details

It’s tempting to think of a composition zone as just a window into another layout, but they are a little more sophisticated than that. The best way to illustrate this is with an example.

Let’s assume that Eric has decided to get a little bit fancy with the newspaper’s banner. Rather than having a boring old logotype with a white background, he wants the letters to knock out of the white background to reveal a gorgeous panoramic photo sent in by one of the newspaper’s readers. He is convinced that once the readers see their chance to be on the front page, they will send in panoramic photos by the dozen. (Nancy simply smiles and nods.)

To make it happen, Eric begins by selecting the boxes that make up the banner and turning them into a composition zone. Then he shares the composition zone as an external file, so that he can use it with every issue. In the shared external layout file, he turns the newspaper's name into a picture box by choosing style > text to box, and then item > merge commands to knock it out of the sun and the white background (see figure 21).

Figure 21 Creating a banner as a composition layout.

As the type of person who actually reads the manual, Eric has realized that if he gives the enclosing rear-most box a background of none, the background will show through the letters when he uses the composition zone in the host layout. So after he completes and closes the banner file, he goes back to the newspaper, lays down a lovely panoramic shot, and then brings in the composition zone containing the banner to create the results shown in figure 22.

Figure 22 The completed banner. The picture box containing the panorama shows through from behind the composition zone.

As you can see, a composition zone is much more than a hole through which you can see another layout; it’s more like having another layout superimposed over the other stuff on the page. A composition zone’s ability to interact with other elements on the page opens this feature up to nearly unlimited creative possibilities.

Figure 25 Oddly shaped composition zones can be useful.

Managing Composition Zones

You may be concerned about how confusing it can be with all of these shared and non-shared, internal and external, box-based and layout-based composition zones flying around. Certainly the potential is there, and you want to stay on top of it. Especially with synchronization being a factor. When you make a change to a composition layout, you want to know where that change is going to show up. That’s why the collaboration setup dialog box gives you options for controlling composition zones, and a new tab in the usage dialog box helps you to track them.

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