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Participating Frequently
November 25, 2008
Question

Mixing Portrait and Landscape pages in a chapter

  • November 25, 2008
  • 4 replies
  • 2137 views
Hi, all. In my 15 or so years of using FrameMaker, I've never had to work with pages in landscape orientation, so I'm struggling with the following problem.

My client has hired me to fix two FrameMaker books. The contractor who originally set up the files didn't know what she was doing in terms of Frame functionality (grrrrrr), and the client's staff have had a great deal of trouble generating TOCs, cross-references, and so on. I've been hired to clean up the mess, so to speak. But the client likes the look of the final pdfs, and wants to keep the appearance the same.

One book has literally hundreds of tables containing very technical content. Some tables (all in one chapter) are so wide that the page needs to be in landscape orientation.

This particular chapter contains close to 200 pages of tables, one per page, all landscape. Only the first two pages, which contain introductory info, are in portrait orientation.

Is there some way to combine everything in one chapter file? I've created master pages for Left Landscape and Right Landscape, and new paragraph tags for HeaderLandscape and FooterLandscape. But when I try to put everything in the same file, the portrait pages don't work, even though they have the correct master page.

Am I doing something wrong? Should I just keep the files separate? (If I do, I have to make sure the same chapter number appears in both - no problem.)

Also, what happens when I generate a pdf? Do I need to set up the landscape master pages in a certain way to get the landscape pages to appear and print correctly in a pdf?

Any tricks or tips would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

Gilda Spitz
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    4 replies

    Participating Frequently
    November 28, 2008
    Thank you to everyone who replied to my question. In particular, thank you Arnis for suggesting the procedure on the Scriptorium website. That did the trick.

    My situation was slightly more complicated than that procedure because I also had headers and footers. But once I got the main text box fixed, the header and footer were similar.

    It's a big relief to be able to fix this document. I learned something great today. Thank you all so much!

    Gilda
    Participating Frequently
    November 26, 2008
    Hi, Gilda:

    If "not working" means that Apply Master Pages isn't responding to the paragraph tag specified in your mapping-table, it may be that the "trigger" paragraph is in a table cell, not in the main text flow.

    HTH
    ________________
    Regards,

    Peter Gold
    KnowHow ProServices
    Arnis Gubins
    Inspiring
    November 25, 2008
    Gilda,

    See
    http://wiki.scriptorium.com/tiki-index.php?page=Adding+the+LandscapeRight+master+page
    Participating Frequently
    November 25, 2008
    > But when I
    > try to put everything in the same file, the portrait pages don't
    > work, even though they have the correct master page.


    In what way do they not work? I've been using this setup (mixed
    landscape and portrait pages in the same file) for many years. It was
    one of the primary reasons I first began working in Framemaker.

    --
    Kenneth Benson
    Pegasus Type, Inc.
    www.pegtype.com