Update Book sometimes fails to apply master pages

[Lynne A. Price]

Update Book has an option to apply master pages. If a body text frame on the resulting pages has a different size than that on the original page, content might overflow onto new pages. The new pages should use the master page specified in the master page mapping table. In some cases, however, the new pages use the default master page ("Right" in a single-sided document, "Left" or "Right" in a double-sided document).

This seems to happen to documents that are closed or open but not visible. Opening all documents in the book and placing them in separate windows with Window > Tile before updating the book produces the expected results.

I have provided a more detailed description and sample files in https://tracker.adobe.com/#/view/FRMAKER-7650.

      --Lynne

[frameexpert]

Hi Lynne, I have seen this behavior as well in some of my scripts. It seems that FrameMaker can't always correctly determine pagination unless the document is visible on the screen. -Rick

[Barb Binder]

I've had the same experience, Lynne. I've found that if I apply them a few times over the course of several book updates, they all eventually update, but I always manually check the opening pages before sending the book off to print. 

~Barb

[Lynne A. Price]

Rick and Barb,

   Thanks for the feedback. Please add your comments to the bug report to let Adobe know that this problem is not unique to me!

   The situation made more sense to me (the results were still wrong, but I could understand how they might have been produced) when I realized that pages that existed before the update have the correct master page, it's only new pages that don't.

   In the recent project where I saw the issue, repeated updates are not practical. The update is done by an FDK client that recreates some files, imports formats and element definitions from templates, applies a filter expression (for filter by attribute), and  adds or deletes certain text. Writers never update the book directly nor do they publish except through the client. Each time they run the client, they'll get the same result.

   Visibly opening all files is more practical. I have opened as many as 172 tiled documents at one time. I don't know if there is a limit.  I know I used the word "visible" in my previous mesage, but if the FrameMaker window is small enough, not all document subwindows can actually be seen. They do update, however.

        --Lynne

[Bob_Niland]

In my work done in FM3 through FM9, I had enough trouble with doing AMP at the book level that I got out of the habit of even trying, and haven't even explored it in later versions. I now do the AMP in the body component file just revised, and then again for any generated files after Update Book.

Apart from possible lurking legacy bugs, there's a potential "halting problem" risk of infinite loop, if FM tries to be exhaustively recursive about this. It works well enough as is.