Assign Master Pages to EndPages (inserted blank pages)

The Master Page Tools plugin from Silicon Prairie software handles blank pages very nicely and works on FrameMaker 8.x. It's only $10 and might meet your requirements.

The span pages functionality applies only to the first paragraph in the span. In your case, the anchoring paragraph for the table is only there on the first page of the table (despite appearances).

For your situation, perhaps you could assign a paragraph to mark the end of the table. If you set its "space below" property to some large value, like 999 pts, the following content will appear on the next page. Then, you set the "table anchor" ¶ to use the landscape pages, but set it to "Until Changed". Then set the "end of table" ¶ to use the landscape pages, but set it to "Single". Then you should find that your master pages are assigned correctly.

This is slightly clunky but it works well (at least for me).

Jon

Shlomo,

Thanks Shlomo, this solution is very easy to implement and "should" work well, with one caveat. If I have, for example, a multipage table anchored in a paragragh whose paratag uses a special master page pair (as Landscape Left/Right) set to span pages, and if I resume ordinary content on the last page of the table, then I believe that subsequent content will revert the master page for the last page of the table.

Of course, I could add to the template a set of top-of-page paratags just to handle such situations, but that lengthens the catalog and seems to conflict a bit with the template/author distinction. I'd prefer to make this work using our existing paratag set.

I'm trying to test this right now, but spanning does not appear to work as it did yesterday. Only the first page of the table is receiving a landscape master page. I'll need to resolve this problem, then test for the caveat, above.

If you have a suggestion about using "span pages", I'd be grateful!

Best regards,
Elchanan

You may try using FrameMaker's Apply Master Pages function (7.0 or later) for this purpose, as follows:

-- create a new master page, named LeftRegular (or something similar), that will control the layout of the standard Left pages

-- modify your standard Left master page so that it become the special blank page ("intentionally left blank" or so)

-- in the mapping table controlling the assignment of master pages based on paragraph tags or element names, specify that "Body" paragraphs (and/or any other tags encountered on regular body pages) on left-hand pages assign the LeftRegular master page

As you use the Apply Master Pages function (which may be document- or book-wide), the reserved "Left" master page -- not applied by any other paragraph -- will then be the "blank" page.

When switching to the Apply Master Pages approach to control application of custom master pages, all assignments should be controlled through the mapping table (as manually assigned master pages are reset); test the master page assignments you need in a complex document, including multi-page tables (if this applies to your documents).

Shlomo Perets

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I think a plugin (or FrameScript) is the only way to go on this. In most cases, plugins can be used on a newer version of FM .. if you could find it, it might just work.

Cheers,

...scott