Question about flow and background text frames

[Combs, Richard]

Andy Kass wrote:
 
> Thanks, Richard, for confirming that that's just how FM works.
> 
> I still don't see the technical limitation. Master pages are applied
> to the body pages, which in my mind implies being copied into the
> relevant body page. So it would be possible to compute the page that
> the text frame appears on and link to it in the TOC. If a text frame
> is used repeatedly, it should just get several TOC entries (indexing
> would work similarly).
> 
> To me, it just seems that disconnecting a text frame is overloaded
> with the meaning of making it background as well. I'm thinking it
> should work just like a text inset, just stored on the Master pages
> instead of in a separate file (because it will never be shared with
> another file). But I'm new to working with Body/Master/Reference
> pages, so maybe I am misunderstanding them.

I suppose the app could be coded to work in a way somewhat analogous to text insets, but with complete frames instead of flows. But I suspect that if each body page contained a "frame inset" for each instance of every background text frame (header, footer, etc.), it would add considerable overhead and complexity. And the "frame inset" management/UI issues -- I shudder to think. 

Besides, a text-inset-like implementation still wouldn't solve the unique destination problem. Since each occurrence of the "frame inset" would be an exact copy of the master page source, the hypertext destination marker in the source would still be replicated in each "frame inset," and there would still be the disambiguation problem. 

I'm not sure what you're getting at with "disconnecting a text frame is overloaded with the meaning of making it background as well." But there are completely legitimate reasons for using disconnected text frames and/or multiple flows in the body pages of the doc -- newsletters are one example. 


Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
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rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-903-6372
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