[Framers] "Secret" Freeze Pagination Feature

[Richard Pesant]

Hi Stefan,

I used this feature intensively back in the 90s, with FM 5.6/6 if I recall correctly. Back then, I was working for Nortel Networks producing 9000+ pages libraries. As we were developing a new release, we were also supporting up to four previous releases (for corrections and bug fixes). Using the Freeze pagination feature allowed us to provide our customers with only the changed pages. There were some bugs (mainly with tables spanning over one page) and, if I remember, these bugs could not be fixed. We had to break each table by page before freezing pagination but all in all, it worked fine. I was not aware that the feature was still available. I think that keeping it available with some mention and explanation of the table bug would not hurt.

Regards,
Richard Pesant

-----Message d'origine-----
De : Stefan Gentz [mailto:gentz at adobe.com] 
Envoyé : 25 avril 2017 05:20
À : framers at lists.frameusers.com
Objet : [Framers] "Secret" Freeze Pagination Feature

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