Alphabet chart page type?

I am wondering if there is a way to easily access a pre-made alphabet chart page for Bloom. I don’t see a ready-to-add page type for this.
It would be a simple set of pre-made black-outlined text boxes with the font set to a large size for each box.

You can try downloading one of the templates on bloomlibrary.org to see if they contain the page type you’re looking for.
Here’s a link pre-searched for “alphabet”: https://bloomlibrary.org/browse?search=alphabet
Or on our beta site: https://next.bloomlibrary.org/:search:alphabet.

There is also an alphabet chart page in the Story Primer:
https://bloomlibrary.org/browse/detail/zpHSUeny47
On beta site: https://next.bloomlibrary.org/book/zpHSUeny47

Dear Andrew,
Thank you for your reply.
The alphabet chart page in the Story Primer, as far as I can tell, is set for all of the boxes to hold images only, not text. This is exactly the kind of thing we are looking for, except we want the boxes to be text boxes, not image boxes. If you know of something like this, please let us know. That would be really helpful.
Thanks!

I just uploaded an alphabet chart template yesterday–have a look:
https://bloomlibrary.org/browse/detail/3fJLGTz62X

Here’s an example I made quickly using the Basic Book template. It only contains text boxes (no pictures). There are pages showing various formatting possibilities.

The book currently allows for up to 32 letters per page, but you can add or delete rows as appropriate.

You can see that on one page I shaded the vowels and on another page I shaded the consonants. If you want to do something like this, you will need to use the “Change Layout” function to adjust the shading so that it is appropriate to the language in question.

Dear Paul, I had noticed your alphabet chart template when I first glanced through the options, however, I did not bother trying yours because it was A3 size instead of A5 size. However, I just downloaded it to try it out and it appears that it is possible to add it to an A5 size book and then change the size of the page.
Yours has both text and picture, and the team I am working with is looking for one with just text, but I will show them this one and see what they think.

@xofweber
Thank you for making those examples. I think they will be useful in the sense that perhaps we can use your example book and delete the pages that are not needed, but keep the ones that are. As far as I can tell, this is not a template, so I do not see a way to “Add Page” and add one of your example page types. Of course, that makes sense, because every language has a different number of boxes they would need for an alphabet chart. Looking forward to showing used to the team.

I just want to make sure you’re also aware you can create your own template using the Template Starter in Bloom.

image
When you click on it, you will see instructions come up on the right side of your screen.

Once you create the template, you can share that with your team, including by uploading it to bloomlibrary.org.

Good reminder, thanks. I have not tried to use the template starter in a while, maybe now it will be useful for what we need.

I am trying to do it now, but having a great deal of trouble getting the red highlighting to show up on the plus signs to split a text box in two. Every time I get close to the +, it disappears.
If and when I do manage to split it, I can’t choose “Text” because the text is too large and goes out of sight. It only shows “Picture, Video or”. (see upper right corner of my screenshot)

I am trying to modify the one that @paul_frank l made so it includes only text boxes and no pictures, with four text boxes across instead of three.

Sorry; that does look tricky.

One strategy is to use the dotted red lines to change the size of the box long enough to click Text, then move it back.

But perhaps better: I just experimented; you can set the page size larger (A3 Portait), set it all up, and change back. The percentage splits stay the same, so it should maintain the same layout.

Above you mention that you see that Paul’s chart has images and you want one without them. But this one you’re working on does have images. So just in case you didn’t realize, you could still use Paul’s in the same book.

This is, you can combine pages from different templates. In many contexts, people use “template” like we use “shellbook”. In Bloom, we mean two different things by these terms. “Templates” have no content, but instead are a source of new “Add Page” pages. By adding a “Template” to your computer, all the pages for that template should become available in your “Add Page” dialog, regardless of what book you are working in. Maybe we should call them “Page Template Packs”.

For example, I just downloaded Paul’s template to my machine. Now, even in “Moon & Cap”, Bloom offers to add one of those pages:

Yes, the screenshot I show is Paul’s page in the process of being transformed into text-only, but not finished yet.

@andrew_polk Good idea, I will try that.

I like the idea of switching to A3 to set up little boxes on a
page! I can testify that changing the box size in order to select
Text and then putting it back is time-consuming, and it’s hard to
precisely line up edges/borders in vertical columns. Thanks for
the suggestion, Andrew!

Ideally, Bloom would automatically re-size the text for “Video, Picture or Text” so that it would always be visible no matter what your box size, but the work-around has mostly worked for me.
Now my problem is that I cannot or re-size the boxes using the vertical red dotted lines. They just are not showing up for some reason anywhere except the first box that I worked on. I closed Bloom and reopened it and it still is not showing me the red dotted lines for the other boxes. Not sure what I am doing wrong.
I’m happy to hear any advice. Thanks.

You can also resize using the red dotted line when “Change Layout” is off. Does that work?
Please send us the book by going to
Help (?) > Report a Problem
and be sure to include the book.

Thanks,
Andrew

It does appear that Paul’s template does have a problem. It doesn’t include those divider lines. That’s why they aren’t showing up for you!

Unless and until Paul can upload a new one (and since you want a custom version of it anyway), you may need to just start one yourself from scratch. Once you learn the interface for doing so, I think you’ll find it to be fairly straightforward, especially if you use A3 for ease of seeing what you’re doing.

Hm, okay, thanks are looking into it for me. My main job is not
in literacy, so this might have to go on the back burner for a
while, as it sounds like it will take more time to resolve. Maybe
by then there will be other options, such as an improved version
of Paul’s template.

Actually, I intentionally removed the ability to resize boxes, as this is a special-purpose template that is pretty complex to get laid out accurately.