Left hand First page layouts?

[jlemon01]

I'm using Flare as a single-source tool for my small publishing company for a novel I'm putting out. Currently, the book has 0.75" L and R margins, so the text blocks, headers, and footers are all perfectly centered. Th book looks fine, but is just a tad crowded at the inner margins near the binding. What I would really like to do is offset each L and R page by about an 1/8". This means different R and L page layouts, each with an inner margin of about 0.88" and an outer margin of about 0.63". This would allow the L and R pages to mirror each other, and provide a bit more gutter space near the binding.

Here is the problem:

The book has lots of chapters. In order to avoid costs associated with lots of empty pages, after the first chapter (which starts on a R page), I want the First page associated with each chapter to land on either a L OR a R page. But Flare's First page layout seems designed to only work on a R page. How can I create a First page with a L page layout?

I tried linking the chapter to a Title page with the appropriate margins. This leaves an empty page between the first page and the second page of the chapter, so that won't work.

I then formatted a Normal with the appropriate margins for a L First page. But since this First page has no headers or footers, Flare used this Normal page to remove the headers and footers from EVERY page of that chapter! So that, too, is no good.

If needed, I can stick with the format I've got. It looks fine. But I'm kind of a perfectionist. If there is a fairly easy way to pull off what I want, well then, I want to do it!

Am I overlooking some easy, obvious trick?

Thank you in advance for your comments and advice. This forum has saved my skin many times.

-John Lemon
Technical Writer and
Owner, Ilium Press

[SteveS]

Been a long time since I played with this, and I don't have access to Flare at the moment so I'm relying on memory...

If you use a page layout or master page with only left and right pages (no first or last) I seem to recall the chapters will just appear where they naturally fall.

Make sure you make a backup of your page layout before deleting the first page, I am using memory (which gets worse as I get older).

HTH

[jlemon01]

Steve, thanks for your suggestion. But I do want a different looking first page for each chapter: It has a chapter title, starts about 1/3 of the way down the page, and has no headers or footers, where all of the other body pages will have these elements. While I am grateful for the idea, I don't this resolved my problem.

[kwag_myers]

...I do want a different looking first page for each chapter: It has a chapter title, starts about 1/3 of the way down the page, and has no headers or footers, where all of the other body pages will have these elements...

I haven't done much with Print outputs, but I believe you have to use a separate Page Layout for the chapter title and insert Page Layout Break in the TOC for the remaining content. I don't see a way of doing this dynamically, so you may have to make your chapter title page a separate XML file.

[jlemon01]

Hmmmm... well, Kwag, that is a possible answer, but I'm not sure it is worth all of the additional effort.

In short, I was hoping Flare had a simple solution to address this problem. If not, then perhaps I need to submit an enhancement request. What I am trying to do here is not all that uncommon in the publishing industry. In fact, just a moment ago, I grabbed several non-fiction books off of my reference shelf and found several that have chapters that start on both L and R pages. And they have differing but mirrored inner and outer margins. Flare should have a user-friendly way to accommodate this issue, IMHO.

[crdmerge2]

Do you have these options set in the Chapter/Page Layout Break panel of the Printed Output tab under the chapter's TOC Properties?

Page Type: First
Auto-end on 'left' page: Disabled


Good luck,
Leon

[LTinker68]

Steve, thanks for your suggestion. But I do want a different looking first page for each chapter: It has a chapter title, starts about 1/3 of the way down the page, and has no headers or footers, where all of the other body pages will have these elements. While I am grateful for the idea, I don't this resolved my problem.

You can do this in Flare. You set up a page layout that has the following page types: First, Left, Right, Empty (last one is optional). You set up the First page layout the way you want, including without headers and footers and with a smaller body frame. In your TOC, where you want the chapter to start, you specify that topic as the start of a new chapter and specify the First page in the page layout as the one to start with. It will only use the page of the layout once in the chapter, so when the content gets too long for the First page, it will switch to the Left page then Right and so on.

The only place you might run into problems is if you don't have your chapters always start on the right page, for example, which means the First page might occasionally be on the left side so the inner margin wouldn't match. If you included the Empty page layout and set the chapter to auto-end on left, then your First page of each chapter would always be on the right side, so you could adjust the inner margin accordingly for that situation. Since it is a common industry standard to have chapters start on the right page, that probably isn't a problem. BTW, you can also style the Empty page directly, so you could hard-code "This page left intentionally blank" on it, if you wanted.

[jlemon01]

You set up a page layout that has the following page types: First, Left, Right, Empty (last one is optional). You set up the First page layout the way you want, including without headers and footers and with a smaller body frame. In your TOC, where you want the chapter to start, you specify that topic as the start of a new chapter and specify the First page in the page layout as the one to start with. It will only use the page of the layout once in the chapter, so when the content gets too long for the First page, it will switch to the Left page then Right and so on.

Lisa, I believe this is exactly what I have done. But since we can only have one First page layout, I chose to use the margins that would appear on a R page. So chapters that start on a L page unfortunately also adopt these margins, which looks really weird.

I guess I could create a First page that is exactly centered (say 0.75" inner and outer margins) so it appears the same way on both L and R pages. But then the Chapter page ruins the symmetry with the opposite L or R page. Ideally, we should be able to create a First-L and First-R page. Or perhaps I am overlooking something obvious here? It certainly wouldn't be the first time, ha ha.

[whunter]

Waaaaay back when, in a time when I actually printed manuals, the printer did the L/R offset for me so I didn't have to worry about it. You might ask your printer.

[kwag_myers]

Hmmmm... well, Kwag, that is a possible answer, but I'm not sure it is worth all of the additional effort.

Yeah, I was hoping to find another way to do it. Lisa's First Page option sounds promising.

[LTinker68]

Lisa's First Page option sounds promising.

Sorry, didn't really read the subject of the post until just now. There's not an easy way to force the Title page to start on the left page. It might flow that way naturally if you have auto-end on left disabled and the previous chapter ended on the right side, but there's no way to force it to the left side every time like there is to force it to the right side.

Since your first page is going to look different from the other pages in the chapter, then I think you can get away with playing with the margins on the body frame of just that page without it being too noticeable to your end users, especially if you really style it to look different from normal content pages.

[jasonsmith]

Would it be possible to have two page layouts - right-start.flpgl and left-start.flpgl - each with first, left and right pages and apply them to each chapter as required? I guess you'd have to turn off "end on left page" etc.

[jlemon01]

Hmmmm... now that is an interesting workaround that might actually work...
I'll give that a try and get back to you.

[LTinker68]

Would it be possible to have two page layouts - right-start.flpgl and left-start.flpgl - each with first, left and right pages and apply them to each chapter as required? I guess you'd have to turn off "end on left page" etc.

This would work in the short-term, but it does have a little bit of maintenance involved. If you add a topic to the middle of a chapter, for example, or add enough content to expand a topic to a new page, then the following chapter may now need to start on the opposite page, which means you'd have to modify its TOC properties to point to the other page layout. Likewise with subsequent chapters, as changing one chapter may have a ripple effect on each chapter that follows.

Is there a requirement that your chapters have to start on the left page? Most printed books* have chapters start on the right page, with the preceding page containing content or being blank, depending on how much content was in that chapter. Having your chapters start on the right page and having auto-end on left enabled will do everything that you want, just on the right side instead of the left side.

*Books printed in English anyway; don't know the standards for non-English written publications.

[jlemon01]

I don't really have a requirement for L or R chapter pages. It is a matter of cost savings, aesthetics, and common practice for fiction. Many novels have chapters that start on L pages. I also thumbed through a few reference books on my tech writing shelf--books from O'Reilly, Wiley, Hungry Minds (Cliffs Notes), and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich all have chapters that start on L pages. In fact, I'm finding that L page chapters are so common that I'm surprised Flare doesn't readily accommodate it. Another enhancement request, perhaps?

[LTinker68]

You can certainly submit one. The URL is https://www.madcapsoftware.com/feedback ... quest.aspx.

In the meantime, if you don't have a requirement either way, I think you'll find going with the right-page option for now will be easier in the long run. You can always change that later when MadCap adds the start-on-left option.

BTW, when I say the chapter starts on the right page, I'm including the first page of the chapter, which could be just a title page, or a "what's in this chapter" list, or an introduction, etc. Those I'm used to seeing start on the right page. The meat of the chapter content does start on the next page, which would be the left page. It just occurred to me that there might be some confusion as to what we both mean when we say the chapter starts on the left or right page. I'm talking about the page that actually says "Chapter 2", for example. Just wanted to make sure that's what you were talking about, too.

[jlemon01]

Yes, I am talking about having the chapter number (Chapter xx), followed immediately by body text, appearing on the left-hand page.

However, I also noted a number of books with chapters that start on the right page (say, a Chapter Title and intro), but its content begins on the back of that page (i.e., a left page). It seems many of the Adobe manuals use this format.

[wclass]

Are you generating to Word or PDF (or something else)?
There is a workaround if you are happy to create a Word document - I suggest you leave the margins as you had them initially, create a Word document, and within Word, add a "gutter" margin.
This should solve your problem, but I encourage you to raise a bug and ask that Flare page layouts let you specify a "gutter" as well.

[jlemon01]

I'm generating to PDF, and then saving that as a Postscript file. I then run it through Distiller to exact settings for the book printer.

[ChoccieMuffin]

Did this one ever get resolved? I agree with the original poster, it is very common, and it's also a really useful thing to be able to do, particularly if your page count is a bit tight. If you have lots of short chapters you don't necessarily WANT loads of empty pages - it's expensive and looks, well, odd!

Enhancement request going in now!

[jlemon01]

Yes, I found the following workaround:
1. Create a normal set of page layouts with a right (odd) page having the chapter title page layout, and your normal right/left body pages.
2. Copy this page layout set, and then create a mirror image of the chapter title page, but on a left (even) page, also with normal right/left body pages.
3. Apply the appropriate page layout set to the first page of each chapter.

I was pleased to hear that MadCap has since addressed this issue by adding controls for this feature in a recent upgrade (v.9 I think?).
However, due to budget reasons, I haven't taken the upgrade yet. At any rate, thank you MadCap for listening to my needs. I think this is the third or fourth enhancement request I have submitted that they have incorporated!

Regards,
-John