Fine tuning pagination

[Steve Rickaby]

At 08:55 -0600 22/4/08, Linda G. Gallagher wrote:

>OK, I'm going to show my ignorance, but maybe I'm not the only one. Dumb
>questions follow.

Not at all dumb...

><Manually stretching the main page flow to take lines back>
>
>Do you mean to make the main text frame on a body page larger? Hmm, seems
>like that will look odd if pages have different size text frames. I do only
>have headers, so I don't have to worry about bumping into footers.

Yes, that's what I meant: making a small adjustment to the height of the main flow (at the bottom) on the preceding *body* page to the page containing an orphan. Yes, gross changes are out, as they will look bad, but sometimes a very small change can pull an orphan line back. If not, you can use 'keep with next' to pull the widow over the page break.

One of the things proofreaders seem to write most often on my copy is 'take back'... little do they know how hard it can sometimes be!.

> <Manually shrinking the main page flow to move lines forward>
>
>Similarly, make the text frame on a body page larger?

No, manually decreasing the size of the main flow a small amount, again at the bottom.

Both these operations, on a body page, create a special instance that differs from the master. Clearly, if you reapply master pages, these special instances are discarded, but while they exist, FrameMaker recognises and honors them.

> <Micro-control of text, for example adding small amounts of negative
>tracking to pull a hyphenated word back from a page foot>
>
>Negative tracking?

Highlight a problem section of text, pull up the character designer, set all fields to 'As is' and then apply small negative percentages to the 'Spread' field. If anything up to -1% doesn't fix the problem, it's best to tackle it some other way, as the text compression might become visible.

With these and Hedley's suggestions, you are operating more in the area of art than technology. Page balancing is always a compromise, but as with most print design, if it looks right, it probably is. You get an eye for it with time... sometimes quite a lot of time. I have not yet met a tech author who was also a trained graphic designer, although I expect such people do exist, and lucky they are. The rest of us have to muddle through picking up skills as we go along. It's part of the fun, I guess.

HTH
-- 
Steve