How do you create a section name (or any variable that changes by section)?

[Thomas_Calvin]

It seems pretty common to have a name for each section of a document, but I can't find any way to specify a variable whose value can change by section. How does one do this?

[Barb Binder]

A 486? My first thought is that we are both old! LOL. That was before Adobe bought FrameMaker from FrameMaker Technology. 

And yes, you can download a free 30-day trial if you are curious: https://www.adobe.com/products/framemaker/download-trial.html.

If it looks intriguing, I've got a bunch of free training webinars here: https://www.rockymountaintraining.com/adobe-framemaker-webinars/

~Barb

[Thomas_Calvin]

I'll check it out, thanks!

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

@Thomas_Calvin Like @Barb Binder, I teach (and use) both FrameMaker and InDesign. I was a Frame Consultant with Frame Technologies since 1991.  

It seems to me, from your various posts,  you are trying to find reasons to replace InDesign. However, I think you could really use some consultation before you make that decision from someone like Barb or myself. I don't think you are going to find the "perfect" page layout program you seem to be looking for. A desktop-publishing Diogenes, if you will. 😁

As to your current problem, I'm not sure you have to "waste" the Section marker for the number next to the Section text. If you use the Chapter number and create a book file, that would increment the number. Which would leave the Secion marker for what it was intended for (and, I believe, the way you want it to work). There are numerous options, but everything depends on your workflow. For example, you could simply have different based-on parent pages with different section text that you can color code on the Page panel for easy identification. 

If I understand it correctly, you are new to this team (and perhaps InDesign?) but your team has been using InDesign already. I don't know for how long, but have they said they want to change? It could be whomever set up the templates did not set up an efficient workflow OR things changed and were added overtime rendering the initial templates inefficient. It might be worth stepping back from the day-to-day issues and see if the InDesign templates need restructuring. 

[Thomas_Calvin]

I'm not trying to find reasons to replace it; I'm encountering them.

There is very little in the way of legacy structure in the documents. The team has never had time to delve into the workings and best practices of this application. They had set up a whopping two parent pages (counting facing pages as one) per large document. These documents are entire manuals. They had parents for content pages and intentionally-blank pages, and that's about it. These had headers and guidelines on them, and nothing else.

Therefore I am free to establish structure from the ground up and use it for a new manual that I'm writing. The structure must also be low-friction for the rest of the team to adopt from now on. That means such non-intuitive shenanigans as Ctrl-clicking on every odd page to put text on it are unacceptable.

There are no book files here, except for the one I just created to work around the section-naming issue. This particular document isn't long enough to really warrant being a book, but so be it. The others in our collection truly should be books and will be.

But that doesn't change the fact that sections generally have numbers and names; yet InDesign doesn't conceive of this situation. Why? And why hard-code things at all? If Adobe had simply provided an option to make text variables whose scope was limited to a section, they wouldn't have to conceive of every use we might have for section-specific text.

I have also been planning to solve problems with automation, with scripting of course being a part of that. But here again there are huge holes in Adobe's functionality. For example, our documentation contains many diagrams that are replete with numbered arrows. I learned that this is a laborious hassle for our artists, so I wrote a script to automate arrow creation. But guess what you can't do programmatically in Illustrator? Put an arrowhead on a line. You can draw a line, but line endings are totally missing from the scripting environment. How does that make it out the door, let alone remain that way for a decade or two?

So I'm not really betting on scripting to fill gaps in InDesign either. That's why I find it extremely aggravating when fundamental publishing functionality is missing from InDesign or dysfunctional.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Thomas_Calvin

https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/extendedscript-apply-arrowheads-to-a-path-obj... 

Scripting InDesign is way better. 

[Thomas_Calvin]

Well, that's encouraging!

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

If I recall, you came into this after the fact, so I can discuss/question what happened early on...

The management at the time was derelict in their duty by not having professional templates built and not providing proper training for the team. Most of the solutions to your various posts are simple compared with what your team has been through already. 

I don't know enough about your project to stay that a book file is the only solution, but I suspect there are other options. 

Question: just how long is a typical project?

[Thomas_Calvin]

I wouldn't. That's not how things go at regular companies in the real world. The content is there, in a relatively simple format. Now we have the opportunity to do just that: build templates to work with from now on. I've documented instances where the building and usage of said templates is a needless PITA.

The body of work here is on-going as long as the company exists. We operate under strict accuracy and revision-tracking requirements. Manuals are created when products are created, and revised when those products are revised.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

You wouldn't what?

I am very familiar with "regular companies in the real world".  That's probably why the documentation is in the condition it seems to be in. 

As I mentioned in your other posts, you will find issues with any program you test. Perhaps an XML solution with FrameMaker could work. Again, without actually studying the problem, it's not possible to say. 

[Thomas_Calvin]

Wouldn't say "The management at the time was derelict in their duty." InDesign didn't exist when most of this material was created.

Anyway, thanks for your helpful suggestions. We anticipate that the future will bring more integration with product-design and manufacturing systems, which may usher InDesign out.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Thomas_Calvin

You, most likely, need some custom solution - InDesign nor FrameMaker aren't perfect - where data will be more or less perfectly loaded - then user will just have to check and finish.

If you work on Windows - I'm more than happy to help you with that.

My tool isn't free - but implementation stage would be FoC - you can walk away at any point. 

[Thomas_Calvin]

Thanks. I have decades of professional programming experience, including lots of text processing. I'll be doing the integration.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Thanks. I have decades of professional programming experience, including lots of text processing. I'll be doing the integration.

By @Thomas_Calvin

But you don't know InDesign extremely well? And you've zero experience with InDesign's DOM? 

[Thomas_Calvin]

Yep.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Yep.

By @Thomas_Calvin

Then you'll be posting a lot of questions here 🙂 

Always happy to help. 

[Thomas_Calvin]

Thanks!