Page flow not working - get even numbers on RH pages in PDF

[ChoccieMuffin]

Hi

I am a new Flare user, and finding the learning cliff very difficult to climb. I have a pretty uncomplicated book to do, only 70-odd pages, and I'm REALLY regretting not doing the blasted thing just in Word, but the decision was made and now I'm stuck with it. (Could have had it done and finished a month ago, grrr!)

I have a project with 21 topics, all of which start with a H1. (I couldn't work out how to get separate topics starting with H2 to flow onto the same page as previous topics, so have had to resort to a print-based approach. Not ideal, I know, but I have to get this blasted book done.)

As the pdf is going to double-sided printing, I need to have different left and right pages.

I have a page layout for Front matter with First, Left, Right and Empty pages. That's fine, it's only used in the first topic so I'm not having a problem.

I have another page layout for the index (though I have yet to insert index markers - want to have a book worth indexing first!)

Finally I have two page layouts for the main body of the document - one with one column and one with two columns - which each have Left, Right and Empty pages. They did used to have a First page, but I deleted that.)

The problem is, when I generate my book, unless a topic happens to generate an even number of pages I find I get some even-numbered pages using a right-hand layout (and odd using LH layout) which is, obviously, a load of rubbish.

I have experimented with the Properties of the chapters from the Master TOC, adjusting whether it starts a new Chapter or not (not a priority for me at the moment as I'm not using chapter numbers anywhere, though I would like to in another book)
I have played around with all the diferent options in the page type list and none of them seems to fix the problem.
I have even gone to the lengths of deleting Empty, to try to force it to use the right page flow, but it JUST DOESN'T WORK!!!


Why is the documentation so singularly unhelpful? I reckon they should get hold of a tech author to write something that's actually helpful. Instead, users have to rely on other users to get them out of a hole.

Please help, I'm going bald with tearing my hair out and that's not a good thing.

[LTinker68]

The problem is, when I generate my book, unless a topic happens to generate an even number of pages I find I get some even-numbered pages using a right-hand layout (and odd using LH layout) which is, obviously, a load of rubbish.

I have experimented with the Properties of the chapters from the Master TOC, adjusting whether it starts a new Chapter or not (not a priority for me at the moment as I'm not using chapter numbers anywhere, though I would like to in another book)
I have played around with all the diferent options in the page type list and none of them seems to fix the problem.
I have even gone to the lengths of deleting Empty, to try to force it to use the right page flow, but it JUST DOESN'T WORK!!!

Anywhere you want a page to start on the right side, as if the start of a new chapter, you DO have to set that topic to start a new chapter and select a page layout to use, even if it's the same page layout you used for the preceding topic. It's only when you tell Flare to start a new chapter that you can define which page that new chapter should start on. I tend to organize my topics into books (e.g., Introduction, About the Screens, Configuring the Software, etc.), and each book I set to start as a new chapter, but I don't have to put them in books -- they could all be at the same level and only some are set to start as new chapters and some flow and inherit from the previous topic.

I suggest you read the print guide that's available from the help menu.

[ChoccieMuffin]

I know how it's supposed to work if you WANT to force every new chapter to start on a specific page, but I don't want to, it just insists on starting a new chapter on a right-hand page, even if that's an even number, and even if there's no empty page beforehand (which I don't want anyway, which is why I took the empty page out of that layout, just to see if that would fix the problem. It didn't.)

I specifically don't WANT to force it to start on a right-hand page, I want it to flow on from whichever page the previous topic ended on. So if topic 1 takes up pages 1 - 3, the next topic should start with page 4, which is supposed to be a left-hand page. But I'm sure I shouldn't have to go in and manually FORCE it to start with a left-hand page - should I? (Please say that's not what I've got to do, if it is, I'm going to quit and work on a farm or something, because this is driving me nuts.)

Any clues?

[Nita Beck]

Check how you've got h1 defined in your stylesheet. Have you got a page-break-before or page-break-after attribute set to "Force to -right page'" or "Force to 'left page'"? I've never used those myself, so don't know what result I'd get, but I thought I'd throw it out here. If nothing else, you should scour your stylesheet. I'd lay money on a bet that the problem is in the stylesheet, not with your page layouts or with how you've set things in the TOC.

Hope this helps to point you in a direction.

[ChoccieMuffin]

Definitely not set to force RH page. I'm going to test it by making the H1 on the first occurrence into a body text and regenerating but I don't hold out much hope. Will let you know but please keep the ideas coming.

[LTinker68]

Make sure that wherever you did specify to start on a new chapter (you had to do it at least once to be able to switch between page layouts), check to see if you have the auto-end on left field enabled or disabled. If it's enabled then it might be automatically throwing in blank pages between topics, although I thought it only did that if you specifically started a new chapter after that topic, but perhaps not.

[Nita Beck]

Ooooh, I shouldn't bet against Lisa! That sounds right to me...

[ChoccieMuffin]

Just done the test, and even with the first paragraph of a new chapter being bog-standard Body text (definitely no breaks before) it sticks page 10 on a right hand page, after page 9, the last page of the previous topic, which was a right-hand page.

So it's not to do with the Heading 1 style.

For every topic that is supposed to be a new chapter, I have specified the following in the Properties dialog:

In the Chapter Break section, Start a new chapter document is CHECKED

Configure using this Page Layout: the standard body layout that I created which has Left and Right pages only. (I deleted both First and Empty as I don't want to use either a different first page at the start of any chapter or a forced empty page at the end of any chapter.)

Page type: THIS may be the problem bit - I have tried using Normal, (default) and (as is) and in all those cases, the page layouts used as described in the first paragraph here, i.e IT'S WRONG!
Auto-end on 'left' page: Disabled

Page Number: Continue from previous

Now here's an interesting follow-on.
Thinking that this [insert graphic expletive] program was going to force me to manually set left or right for the starting page (and yes, I admit, I misunderstood the page type drop-down) I picked LEFT for the chapter that was starting with the wrong page. Re-generated, only to find that the whole chapter was displayed using LEFT PAGES ONLY. So I can't even FORCE the thing to do what I wanted. Even MORE unhappy.

And another interesting follow-on.
I have set up my document so that on right-hand pages, the header uses a MadCap variable Level1 in the header. If I UNcheck the New Chapter checkbox in the topic properties dialog, when I generate the file the pages are STILL wrong, and now I don't get anything in my header at all. So not only is it wrong, it's even more wrong than it was.

(And the intereface on this web page is getting on my nerves as if you type more than a couple of lines it hides the last line you're typing so if there are any spelling mistakes it's because I can't see what I'm typing, and just as well I don't have photosensitive epilepsy. (Can you tell I'm getting REALLY mad now?)


My very last option is going to be creating one single mega topic and sticking THE WHOLE BLOODY BOOK IN ONE CHAPTER!!!!!


AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Actually that' my second-last option. The last one will be dumping Flare, doing the book in Word and then handing in my notice.

[ChoccieMuffin]

Update.

Following some offline assistance from LTinker68 (thank you so much for your help) it turns out that I'm expecting Flare to do things it's not capable of doing. So because I'm using a "facing pages" layout with left and right pages being different, all my chapters HAVE to have an even number of pages, and I HAVE to have blank pages, even though I'm really pressed for space.

Very disappointing, but it seems Flare can't tell the difference between an odd number and an even number.

I feel an enhancement request coming on...

Update: I've just managed to find stuff in the mountains of docs (in the Help a topic called "Disabling Empty Pages") that suggests it should be able to do what I want it to do - now I'm really confused!

Can someone give me the contact details of MadCap's help people, because this is just stupid, or I am being stupid.

[SteveS]

Easy one, even at this time of the morning...

https://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx

[ChoccieMuffin]

Cheers, Steve!

[ChoccieMuffin]

Update: I think I might have solved this one, though it's less than ideal and the very nice support chap also identified a bug which had compounded the problem, which is why I was getting so frustrated because the obvious solution just didn't work. More of that in a minute.

What I wanted was a book that doesn't have empty pages at the end of chapters and with all odd-numbered pages using RH page layouts and all even pages using LH page layouts.

The documentation states that by default a new chapter starts on a right hand page, which I interpreted as meaning that you don't HAVE to use the default. Unfortunately that's not the case - you don't have the option to use anything except the default, which is a pain in the behind, and in my view is a bug in the user docs if people don't accept that it's a bug in the software. Anyway, the only way I could get my little book to use the correct page layouts is to NOT use separate chapters. This means that I can't actually have "Chapter 1: Getting started", "Chapter 2: Settings" etc, so I'll just have to live with it. (As it happens that's not important as it's not the house style here, but I'd be stuffed if it were!) I used Level 1 headings in my headers in the page layouts so at least I do still have the chapter names.

In my TOC I unchecked "Start new chapter" for every chapter, so I can finally get a book that flows the way I want it to.

How many weeks have I been fighting with this problem... I've hacked my project around all over the place, joined all my topics into just a few, split them all up into the smallest pieces and was just one step away from putting the entire book into a single topic as I just couldn't figure out how else to do it!

As for the bug, I had tried to resolve the problem by forcing chapters to start with a left-hand page (because they happened to fall on an even number) but it turns out that if you have a topic that's over a certain number of pages, if you tell it to START on a specific page, it then applies that page to ALL the pages in the chapter, which is why I ended up with loads of left-hand pages one after another, as that just happened to fall on a long topic. A bug has been entered for that one but it was the final straw for me with this problem. But happily bodged now.