[Framers] "Secret" Freeze Pagination Feature

[Ian Proudfoot]

Hi Stefan,
Yes I tried to use the feature, but it's lack of support for structured
documents made it useless for my applications. Here are my thoughts on where
the need came from and why it's still needed...

Much of my work is in aerospace and defence where the distribution of paper
documents is (or was) a massive undertaking. 

I used to be the tech pubs manager for the General Aviation aircraft
manufacturer Britten-Norman Ltd. We had about 1200 aircraft in service and
had a legal obligation to provide regular updates to the thousands of pages
of maintenance and flight operations documents. We had our own printing
company but there was a massive cost associated with printing and
distribution of revised content to all parts of the world. 

The only realistic way to achieve this was to only print "revision packages"
in loose-leaf format. FrameMaker 5.0 was the software that I chose to
overhaul our archaic production system. One of the attractive features was
Freeze "pagination" which was due to be 'improved' or so I was promised by
Frame Technology! I really wanted to use Interleaf which did a much better
job in this area, however only FrameMaker was affordable.

I tried to convert an existing manual to FrameMaker with Freeze Pagination
for revision packages, but it was cumbersome and lacked the ability to match
our existing page numbering scheme. When we implemented SGML we had to
abandon any attempt to automate this feature.

A switch to the new S1000D specification provided a suitable way forward
that provided an efficient, modular way to deliver revision packages that
could avoid the horrors of page Freeze Pagination. DITA followed S1000D with
a similar modular concept. I wouldn't volunteer to go back to the old ways!

Since that time I have developed FrameMaker applications for my clients that
have implemented pagination management for loose-leaf specifications, but
never using the built-in FrameMaker features, it has to be FDK, ExtendScript
or FrameScript. In the structured world this has become more difficult since
the move from SGML to XML. The good thing about FrameMaker is that you can
still use those SGML features in the FM environment then saving as XML
giving the best of both worlds. 

Please don't remove the Freeze Pagination feature, but explain how to use it
and its limitations. If it is considered a worthwhile development, please
give us a version that works with structured documents and can generate a
List of Effective Pages too.

Sorry to ramble on.
Ian


iTP-X
Bembridge
Isle of Wight 
United Kingdom




-----Original Message-----
From: Framers
[mailto:framers-bounces+ian.proudfoot=itp-x.co.uk at lists.frameusers.com] On
Behalf Of Stefan Gentz
Sent: 25 April 2017 10:20
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: [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

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