Inspiring

Question

Can Master Pages move with accompanying text thread?

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
September 25, 2024
4 replies
650 views

I have Masters for chapter openinngs, and Masters for basic pages (in a book). But if the text changes, which it usually does after the editors get their hands on things, the chapter openings and text pages then have the wrong Master applied. I find I have to manually change and re-apply the masters to the now rearranged text. Seems like something that could fairly simply be automated somehow?

How to

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Peter Spier

Community Expert

This can be a good argument for making each chapter a separate file and combining them in a Book file, or even using a separate story for each chapter if you don't want to do that. That kind of forces you to add or remove pages rather than have everything reflow.

There may even be a sample script that breaks the thre thread at a selected frame (there are scripts that do that if there isn't one in the samples).

saxtonstudioAuthor

Inspiring

Possibly so, Peter - thank you, and something to keep in mind. I personally do like all the text to flow, and being able to see the whole book in one shot. (Also more convenient when it gets to the epub stage as well, IMO.) In another vein, I've also used Section tabs to break apart chapters in some books, but they don't move with the text either, so I haven't found them especially useful except when number styling changes. (unless of course I'm doing something wrong there!)

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

The short answer is that no, Parent (*ahem*) pages are fixed to the physical page of the document. The solution is to try and make as much as possible bound to paragraph styles — for example, if you want headings spaced down the page, don't use a modified ~~Master~~ Parent page to do it, use the reliable space-above techniques so the heading spaces down no matter where it flows.

This of course won't work with things like a blank header (and/or footer) on chapter first pages. There are many tricks and workarounds, but the only real solution is to make the occasional pass to re-apply the correct base page to each document page.

saxtonstudioAuthor

Inspiring

This "no", that they are fixed to the page assigned, seems to answer my question. (And sorry, habit – right, they're called Parent pages now.) I'm happy with them and it's not a big deal to alter the little bit on a page that I need to when applying the other master. (oops, parent) Since there are only 2 parent pages that have text, it's easy enough.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@saxtonstudio

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/can-i-automatically-apply-an-object-style-based-on-paragraph-style/m-p/14881163

saxtonstudioAuthor

Inspiring

This looks very advanced to me! Might be really helpful in a complex book though!

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@saxtonstudio

Not sure if you are referring to my post there - my IDT can be used in many different ways including live monitoring - or the other tool, the Mastermatic script from ID Extras - which is much simpler but does exactly what you are looking for.

rob day

Community Expert

Hi @saxtonstudio , can you show an example of the two masters, or provide a sample ID file?

saxtonstudioAuthor

Inspiring

Hi Rob, I can – and they are simple enough - but if the answer is that the masters stay fixed on on a page until re-applied after text reflows, I'm not sure how useful it would be?

rob day

Community Expert

but if the answer is that the masters stay fixed on on a page

Maybe you don't need 2 masters and it could be done with paragraph styles? Depends what the masters look like.

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