[Framers] "Secret" Freeze Pagination Feature

[Lin Sims]

Both the US military and the aircraft industry made extensive use of point
pages. I don't know if they still do.

On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 5:20 AM, Stefan Gentz <gentz at adobe.com> wrote:

> Hi Framers,
>
> Klaus Daube reminded me a few days ago, that there are some "secret"
> features in FrameMaker, that are still present in the product today, but
> are no longer in the UI nor documented, especially "Freeze pagination" and
> "Open Heroic". I'm currently going through them and discuss them with the
> product managers and documentation team.
>
> So, one of these "secret features" is "Freeze pagination": It's still
> present in FM 2017 and can be accessed with Esc-p-z.
>
> For those who do not know the feature: Let's say you have a 100-page
> document with one text flow. On the master page you have a footer with a
> page count variable (<$curpagenum>). Now you can "freeze pagination" which
> will disconnect all text frames (that is, you get 100 disconnected pages
> with a Text Flow "A"). Now you can add new disconnected pages between other
> pages (called "point pages"). Or if you are at the end of a page and add
> new content, a new page is added right next to the current page with a
> connect text frame to the previous page. The page number will show a "point
> page number" (e.g. when you add pages after page 7, they will be numbered
> as 7.1, 7.2 etc.).
> The idea of this feature back in the days was to create "revision pages"
> ("point pages").
>
> That said, I understand how the feature works, but in more than 20 years I
> have never used it myself (never had a use case for it) nor met anyone ever
> using it and all people I have asked in the last days who know this feature
> told me the same (never had a use case).
>
> My question to you:
> - Has anyone ever used this feature when it was still present in the UI
> many versions back?
> - Is anyone still using it?
> - What is the use case scenario that you can think of where it still might
> be useful?
>
> Your feedback will help us to have a new look at this feature and discuss
> what to do with it (bring it back to the UI and document it or keep it
> hidden or maybe even remove it).
>
> Looking forward to your feedback,
> Stefan Gentz
> Adobe Worldwide TechComm Evangelist
>
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-- 
Lin Sims