Eliminating blank pages caused by conditional text

[Guest]

FM 8.0p277
Windows 7 32-bit

My PDF file contains extra blank pages caused by hidden conditional text. All files are set to "Delete empty pages." Is there anything else I need to do?

Thanks!
Karen

[peter minneapolis]

Karen Story wrote:

FM 8.0p277
Windows 7 32-bit

My PDF file contains extra blank pages caused by hidden conditional text. All files are set to "Delete empty pages." Is there anything else I need to do?

Thanks!
Karen

The pages aren't truly empty, the empty pages use custom master pages, or both . Turn on View > Text Symbols to see if carriage returns remain after hiding conditioned text. Select rogue empty document pages, then View > Master Pages to see which masters apply to them. If the masters are not Left or Right, they are custom.

HTH

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

[Guest]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for responding!

The blank pages do not use custom master pages and do not have any empty carriage returns. However, because of the way the page break happens to fall, the marker for the hidden conditional text is the only thing on the blank page. If a hidden condition marker is the only thing on a page, can FM not delete the page?

Also, is there any way that FM can ignore a file in the book that is 100% conditional, and not create any pages for it in the PDF?

Thanks,

Karen

[peter minneapolis]

Karen Story wrote:

Hi Peter,

Thanks for responding!

The blank pages do not use custom master pages and do not have any empty carriage returns. However, because of the way the page break happens to fall, the marker for the hidden conditional text is the only thing on the blank page. If a hidden condition marker is the only thing on a page, can FM not delete the page?

Also, is there any way that FM can ignore a file in the book that is 100% conditional, and not create any pages for it in the PDF?

Thanks,

Karen

Hi, Karen:

Not empty is NOT empty! Fix this by conditionalizing the paragraph mark or end-of-flow / end-of-document character (double-s mark.)

To make a book without specific files, make a book without the specific files. IOW, make a book for each purpose, if whole documents must be omitted.

HTH

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

[Guest]

You are of course correct: the end-of-flow character was not conditionalized.

Unfortunately, we aren't currently able to create separate books due to our automation workflow. It would be cool if FM could have conditional files!

Thank you so much for your help!

Karen 

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

I've never tried it, but what about using the "Exclude" function on the file in the book? I know that it causes generated files like ToCs and IXs to skip them - what happens with PDFs?

[Guest]

Hi Jeff,

I'm not familiar with the Exclude function. Is it available in FM 8? Is it available from the interface, or via FrameScript?

Thanks,

Karen

[peter minneapolis]

Karen Story wrote:

Hi Jeff,

I'm not familiar with the Exclude function. Is it available in FM 8? Is it available from the interface, or via FrameScript?

Thanks,

Karen

New in FM 9.

HTH

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

[peter minneapolis]

Jeff_Coatsworth wrote:

I've never tried it, but what about using the "Exclude" function on the file in the book? I know that it causes generated files like ToCs and IXs to skip them - what happens with PDFs?

Dang! I missed this recently-new book feature. Thanks for the reminder, Jeff. It's described briefly at http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FrameMaker/9.0/Using/WSd817046a44e105e21e63e3d11ab7f7561e-7ff4.html.

The topic mentions that numbering is adjusted, but there's no specific mention of generated files. I've added a comment to the topic in the FrameMaker 10 version.

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

[Guest]

I conditionalized the end-of-flow marker, but as soon as I hide conditional text the marker reverts to unconditional. ('Show Condition Indicators' is selected.) Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Karen

[peter minneapolis]

Karen Story wrote:

I conditionalized the end-of-flow marker, but as soon as I hide conditional text the marker reverts to unconditional. ('Show Condition Indicators' is selected.) Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Karen

Ooops, I was working from memory and forgot about this.

Make sure that the Start pagination property of the paragraph format of the end-of-flow marker is Anywhere. Depending on where it ends after hiding the conditioned text, you might need to create a new paragraph format for the end-of-flow marker that is a very small type size and perhaps a negative space before, to help insure that if it becomes the last line on a page, there's likely to be room for it. Another idea is to set it to keep with previous paragraph, so that if it does run over to a new blank page, there's also some visible content with it. You can probably find some visible text in the document that can be edited to avoid the overflow at the end.

HTH

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

[Guest]

Thank you very much for this helpful information, Peter!