Is there a continuation variable for regular headings (or something similar)?

You might want to contact Rick Quatro [see: About – FrameAutomation.com ].  I  had him develop a script for a client that required multiple numbered heading levels repeated with a continuation on every page. This script should be easily adapted to your requirements.

Working off of Lynne's suggestion, are you familiar with master page mapping tables? (A lot of long-time Frame users have no idea that it it exists.)

Using the master page mapping table, you can tie a master page to a paragraph tag, and assign the master pages automatically in a single document or via a book update. In your case, if default masters have the word "Continued", then you could map your Heading tag to a master that doesn't use it, and depending on the rest of the document this might be the best solution.

If this a new concept, take a look at this post that I wrote up for one of my students:

Adobe FrameMaker: Automatically Assigning Custom Master Pages - Rocky Mountain Training

The other idea I had—and I'm not convinced it is a better one—is to have two Heading tags, one with Continued and one without (as you previously mentioned). But you could add the word Continued via an Auto-Number and place it after the head. This will have the same constraints as what you tried and described on Sunday, but if the master pages don't work out, this might still be a viable alternative. You still have to manage the heads yourself, but at least you don't have to type anything extra.

However, I wasn't clear on what you meant by:

if the text from the previous page's paragraph goes too long then the continuation heading gets bumped a page ahead with a massive blank page in-between.

It sounds like instead of adding a next page break to the Heading tag, you have a top of next right or left page assigned—otherwise I'm not sure why it would add a blank page.

Not having seen your documentation, we can't say definitely that one method is better than another. My goal in FrameMaker is always to weigh the options, and pick the one that puts the least amount of work on my shoulders.

~Barb

The word "Continued" in table heads is the Table Continuation variable, and as such, only works in tables. When used, it is automatically suppressed on the first page of the table, and then appears on every subsequent page.

You can manually add the word "Continued" anywhere you like in a FrameMaker document , or perhaps create a user variable for it—which allows you to control the spelling and formatting from one location—but you will still have to insert it where you want it to appear. There is no equivalent feature to the Table Continuation variable outside of tables.

~Barb

I suppose I should clarify that I'm not necessarily looking for a variable--I'm mainly interested in learning how to make a non-table heading automatically reappear on subsequent pages without having to retype it and without the repeated heading being counted as an additional heading (for the purposes of pdf bookmarks, table of contents, and other doc navigation).

Also I assume there would be some way to format the repeated headings, since the one I saw was a smaller font size and had "(continued)" added to it.