unwanted paragraph tag after text inset

This problem has persisted for as long as I can remember. We have just updated to FM9 and it is still an unresolved bug. In fact, you want that extra line to prevent the cross references from breaking. The only work around I found was to leave the extra paragraph tag until we convert the text insets (just before the final publishing) and then tidy up and reformat the books (you always need to do that anyway...).

Niels -

I am stuck in Frame 7.0p577 on Mac (having not yet invested in emulators etc.), so what I say here may not apply to Frame 9 on Windows – but it probably does. I am very familiar with the iceberg of an issue whose tip you have encountered. As I see it, here's what's up:

When Frame imports a text inset, it takes the end-of-flow and turns it into an end-of-paragraph (displayed with ¶ at its end, assuming you have Display Text Symbols turned on in View Options). Provided that the inset is followed by another paragraph, then all is well. However, the creation of this extra paragraph is insidious in cases where the inset lies at the end of a flow.

First, if the inset ends a document, an extra line results; that extra line is troublesome if it pushes over a page boundary. The workaround is to increase the height of the page frame, to make room for the line without spilling onto a new page, but that's messy because the manual height adjustment needs to be adjusted again if subsequent editing changes the placement of the extra line.

Second, it seems that the extra paragraph takes the paragraph tag – and therefore, the paragraph formatting – of the FIRST paragraph in the inset. If the first paragraph of the inset's source flow has an autonumber, then the stray paragraph after the inset will appear with ANOTHER autonumber of that style.

Third, if an inset is placed in a table cell, the extra line causes the height of that cell to increase. In the common case that the cell then exceeds the height of other cells in the row, the height of the entire row will increase, leaving undesired space. Workarounds such as manually limiting row height are a pain.

Fourth, if the inset is placed in a footnote, the extra line causes the footnote height of that cell to increase, leaving unwanted space between footnotes of at the bottom of the page.

Over the years I have adopted the following technique: At the front of flows liable to be used as inset sources, I have an empty paragraph tagged BOF. I set the BOF format in both the source document and the host document to Run-In. Any autonumbering in the first functional paragraph of the source will then be prevented from being carried into the referring document. You might think that a comparable paragraph at the end of the inset source – EOF, maybe – would defeat the insidious behaviour that I describe, but too much of this and things start to fail.

I have one or two additional ideas in case anyone who made it this far wishes to contact me directly. In fact I'd be delighted for anyone who understands any of the above to contact me!

I would be delighted if someone at Adobe would follow-up on this, but honestly don’t expect too much.

- Charles,

www dot Poynton dot com

Hi Niels

Have you tried a non-breaking space (CTRL+space)?

Yves