Grouping notes in a frame

[Karbo_]

Hello !

I have quite a challenge now, as we are migrating all customer's manuals into Flare.

The page layout is quite special, as:

• Notes must not be written into the text, but instead they are just cross-references displayed as "Note X" which redirect to the corresponding note text.
• All notes texts must be grouped in a Notes frame which is present on the right pages.
• The reader should not turn the page to read a text note, ie on 2 pages there is notes from "Note 1" to "Note 14", then the frame must contain all text notes from 1 to 14.

How would it be possible to make this as "clean" and practical as possible ? Have you already worked on that kind of configuration ?

Thank you very much in advance.

Best regards.

[Karbo_]

Just a little up if any of you can help me on this special "issue".

[Karbo_]

Hello again and sorry for the insistence.

I am coming back with my question with illustrations of what we used to do with Framemaker so it is more understandable.

Capture1.PNG

Capture2.PNG

One of the important point is that notes numbering should be reset to 0 at each new chapter. For now, each article corresponds more or less to a level 2 subchapter, so I guess we will have to change manually the starting number of the "Notes" list for each article. Which means a lot of possible problems when we update the documentation.

Would there be a way to make all of this as automatic as possible ?

Thank you very much !

Best regards.

[pacdam]

Hi Karbo_

I see you're not having much luck getting a reply for this. I think part of the reason for this might be some confusion over your question. Are you basically looking for a way to have numbered notes that are reset with each new chapter?

I'm also a little confused as you where the link goes (even with your pictures). Are you saying that on one page of your manual, you might have four note links and that clicking on any of these would take you to a page that displays those four notes together?

[ChoccieMuffin]

Have you looked at footnotes? That might do something you like.

[Karbo_]

Hello and thanks to both of you for your answers !

@pacdam : I know exactly how it should be in the manual, but indeed I think there is some confusion on how to achieve it and through which ways it can be done with Flare. So it must be even worse for someone who is trying to understand confused questions.
But yes, you are right for your both sentences ! The harsh point is that Flare gives no page preview before generating PDF (or else), so it is hard to know for each topic if they will be on the same 2-pages. Thus the rule "Note 12 text must be on the same 2-pages as the Note 12 cross ref" is difficult to observe.

@ChoccieMuffin : I think you nailed it ! I never used footnotes in Framemaker, Flare and all other software I have used until now so it did not come to my mind to use them. But it looks like it could be the perfect solution, as soon as we have moved the default footnotes position to the right part of the right pages (any help would be appreicated too on this point ).

[paintedturtle]

Hello and thanks to both of you for your answers !

@pacdam : I know exactly how it should be in the manual, but indeed I think there is some confusion on how to achieve it and through which ways it can be done with Flare. So it must be even worse for someone who is trying to understand confused questions.
But yes, you are right for your both sentences ! The harsh point is that Flare gives no page preview before generating PDF (or else), so it is hard to know for each topic if they will be on the same 2-pages. Thus the rule "Note 12 text must be on the same 2-pages as the Note 12 cross ref" is difficult to observe.

@ChoccieMuffin : I think you nailed it ! I never used footnotes in Framemaker, Flare and all other software I have used until now so it did not come to my mind to use them. But it looks like it could be the perfect solution, as soon as we have moved the default footnotes position to the right part of the right pages (any help would be appreicated too on this point ).

You might want to read about the footnotes in the Flare Help. https://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare12 ... tnotes.htm They usually go at the end of a page but can go at the end of a section, if you can make one page a section?
You can also preview Print Layout in your XML editor to see where page breaks likely will occur.
Maybe you can also have some luck in making your Print PageLayouts 2 page with the formatting you're hoping for.

Good luck!
~Sarah

[paintedturtle]

You might want to read about the footnotes in the Flare Help. https://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare12 ... tnotes.htm They usually go at the end of a page but can go at the end of a section, if you can make one page a section?
You can also preview Print Layout in your XML editor to see where page breaks likely will occur.
Maybe you can also have some luck in making your Print PageLayouts 2 page with the formatting you're hoping for.

Good luck!
~Sarah

P.S. You might want to create a Left and Right Page Layout type, and have the Footnotes section on the Right Page Layout be almost the whole page. That could fix the problem. See here for more info: https://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare12 ... e%20layout

[Karbo_]

Hello Sarah and thanks for your help !

Ok I was writing a message to show that positioning of the footnotes block is full of bugs and is hard to achieve, but it finally worked ! Now maybe we will have other issues related to these notes we have not thought about yet, but at this stage it's all good.

Thanks again to you all for giving your time to help, it's really appreciated.