Chapter Title Text Frame Questions

[JohnHuntington]

I have a book with some side heads, and I made a master page with a simple grey background.  It works great when the chapter title is short:

(the grid pattern is a screen capture artifact--on my screen is a solid grey)

I put an empty paragraph in there to scroll down the next body paragraph, and while it's not an elegant solution, it does work.

However, some chapter titles are longer and push things down:

And that pushes down the body text.  So, I tried adding a chapter title text frame to the master page:

This works great visually, and also gives the chapter title more room since the upper text frame doesn't have side heads:

However, now the book files listing seems not to be recognizing the chapter title, and instead is just picking up body text from the document:

The first text frame has "autoconnect" turned off, and I named that "A" and the main body text frame "B".

Any suggestions as to how to get the book files listing to recognize the chapter title? 

Thanks!

John

www.controlgeek.net

[Van Kurtz]

John,

I do not use multiple flows, which I believe is probably your problem, but I think you can do it with a single flow, as you did originally. The trick is to fake the side head.

In the paragraph tag for the title, set the paragraph to run across all side heads and columns. Then set the left indent to be whatever you need to get the wrapping right, and set the first line indent to 0. If you want, you can also set a left tab equal to the left indent, and then insert a tab between the chapter number and title. I am not sure, but this tab may show up in your TOC entry; so you may have to revise the TOC paragraph tag.

Van

[JohnHuntington]

Thanks!  That's a great idea with extending across the side heads.

However, I'd still like to use the separate text frames so that the body text stays alligned with the grey background on the master page...

I wonder if that's possible?

Thanks!

John

[Van Kurtz]

John,

I have not tried this, but you could try creating a master page for the first page in the chapter. Put two frames on the master page BOTH with the flow set to A. Position the first frame where you want the title to be and position the second frame where you want the text to begin. Set the paragraph tag for the title to have no space following. Set the paragraph tag for the FIRST paragraph of the text to Keep X rows together. With X set large enough, FrameMaker would not have room to put the first paragraph in the upper frame, so it will push it to the next frame. If this works, you can even go back to your original side head format for the title. You just have to make sure the top frame is large enough to hold all titles, so that a title does not leak to the second frame.

Van