Master Page Re-order :: Naming issues

[thomaso]

On 10/30/2019 at 2:29 PM, AdamW said:

Re-order Master Spreads
Added the facility to re-order Master Spreads using drag drop in the Pages panel. 

Fine, I can re-order the master page icons. But it results in a switch of the masters name if they have default auto-names "Master A", "...B" etc. So if I switch the order of B and C then still the 2nd master (after A) is labeled B and the 3rd is C – means with the order of the masters also their default auto-names become changed. – Confusing. (This does not happen when the masters got custom names.)

Another disturbing occurrence is the naming of copied masters: If I copy a master "Master A" now its copy gets named "Master B" – whereas when I copy a master with custom name "a" its copy is named "a" as well, so I can work with two identical master names, which doesn't seem to b healthy.

 

[walt.farrell]

Also noted in the Windows beta forum, with a response from Serif:

But your point about copying masters with custom names is new, I think. And I agree that is dangerous as well as very confusing.

[thomaso]

Thanks Walt, interesting discussion.

I don't read the 'same name' issue there. So, don't you have in Windows the ability to use an identical master page name more than once? (which occurs in macOS e.g. if you copy a custom named master)

[fde101]

I don't like either one of these behaviors, though the duplicate name is slightly more palatable than the name not following the page (while still not optimal).

Consider if you have two master pages with a single element on them: a text box, at the same position and size on each, but with different text formatting applied.  If you allowed the default names, then after dragging to re-order, there would be no visual indication that the swap actually took place.  You could drag them repeatedly and nothing would seem to change.

If Serif is going to stick with this questionable convention of the name not following the page, then they really need to consider at a minimum adding some kind of short animation after the drag to emphasize the fact that they were swapped.  Currently there is nothing to help with this.

[Move Along People]

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[walt.farrell]

34 minutes ago, haakoo said:

The renaming should be made easier like either through the layerspanel or rightclick like in the assets panel

Double-clicking on the name isn't easy enough?

Good points about what happens with the renaming, and the inclusion of masters from another file.

[Move Along People]

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[R C-R]

Just my 2¢ worth on this but I think the takeaway is if master page names are important for any reason, they should each be manually given a unique, descriptive custom name ASAP after creation.

I think for most users any builtin automatic renaming scheme will probably be just as confusing as the current behavior.

[Jon P]

Quote

Another disturbing occurrence is the naming of copied masters: If I copy a master "Master A" now its copy gets named "Master B" – whereas when I copy a master with custom name "a" its copy is named "a" as well, so I can work with two identical master names, which doesn't seem to b healthy.

This has always been the case though? If you give a master a custom name and duplicate it that custom name is applied to the duplicate. As long as it doesn't cause any issues in the software i'm not sure I see the issue, maybe renaming to "copy of x" would be nice, but this behavior hasn't really received any complaints in 1.7. I would expect it to be renamed after being duplicated regardless.

Regarding the confusion of switching masters with default names that I responded to in the other forum, we are considering changing this (not saying we will, but I've spoken to the developers about the comments here), but again this changes something that some other users might be used to.

[Move Along People]

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[R C-R]

54 minutes ago, haakoo said:

If one uses multiple mp's it isn't obvious on which one you alter the stuff because it will always say the same mp's name in the layers panel and while hovering the normal page in the pages panel and besides if one wants to apply multiple mp's to a single page it even get's more confusing
DoubleMPname.afpub

Maybe I am missing something but isn't this kind of confusion easily avoidable by simply giving each master page a unique name? For example, in your file it took me just a few seconds to change the name of one of the two "Master Ax" masters to "Master Bx."

[Move Along People]

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