[Framers] Page X of Y, redux, except not quite

[Lin Sims]

Rick Quattro contact me offlist about this issue. I now have a
brand-spanky-new script that does exactly what I need, all neatly wrapped
in a menu option. As always, Rick comes through with elegant and very fast
solutions.

Thanks Rick.

On Thu, May 10, 2018 at 2:54 PM, Lin Sims <ljsims.ml at gmail.com> wrote:

> So here I am at the new job, and we're setting up FM templates. My
> coworker, who has established the house styles/layouts, had set up the old
> Word template with X of Y numbering, EXCEPT
>
>    - Page numbering for the body of the document, which is to say after
>    all the front matter, (X) starts at 1.
>    - Total page count (Y) does NOT include all the front matter (Cover,
>    Inside Cover, RevisionHistory, TOC) or the Back Cover.
>
> Creating X is easy-peazy, of course. But how to create Y?
>
> [This may be something Word has over Frame, because in Word I was able to
> set up a formula in the field code to calculate what Y would be and it was
> all nicely automated. I've never come across something like that for Frame.
> And I cannot believe I'm saying that Word does something better than Frame
> ...]
>
> I've come up with two workarounds.
>
> One is described in the Adobe forums and consists of inserting the
> <$lastpagenum> building block on the virtual "last page" and then xrefing
> to it from all the master pages that have X of Y in their footer frames.
>
> The other is to set up a new variable (of Y), manually updating its value
> to the last page number right before release, and importing variables to
> the other files in the book.
>
> Both of these are doable but (to me) clunky and inelegant. Is there a
> better way already available? Because if not, I foresee me spending a
> considerable amount of time learning javascript then extendscript in the
> hopes that I can figure one out.
>
> I like my coworker, but he does NOT make things simple for me. ;-)
>
> --
> Lin Sims
>



-- 
Lin Sims