Suggestions for hymnal layout, please

[AlanT]

Hello,  (This got posted to the wrong forum earlier)

I have a client asking about having a hymnal laid out, and I want to check if anyone has any suggestions for doing this type of project.

The main thing I'd like to know is whether there are any tools for automatically numbering the hymns within the book (completely separate from page numbers), and for creating multiple indices for topics, title, etc.  This is of particular interest in case they decide to change the order after the initial layout, as the hymn numbers and page numbers would change throughout the book, and it would take a significant amount of time to update 300+ pages if even ONE hymn gets moved.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

[MikeW]

As for numbering, have a paragraph style that uses automatic numbering. That paragraph style can contain only the number or number + title or whatever. 

If the particular hymn is moved elsewhere the publication re-numbers.

[AlanT]

Thanks, Mike!  I'll look into that.

The biggest question I have at the moment (and fairly easy to test, I guess), is whether intervening bullet lists would introduce strange interactions with the hymn numbering.  Not that I see where this would come up in this project, but just something to be aware of for future projects.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, AlanT said:

The biggest question I have at the moment (and fairly easy to test, I guess), is whether intervening bullet lists would introduce strange interactions with the hymn numbering.  Not that I see where this would come up in this project, but just something to be aware of for future projects.

You can specify that a particular numbering style is global, and provide a name for it. Anything that is global like that will maintain its numbering until you tell it to restart, which means that intervening stuff won't interfere with the numbers.

[AlanT]

Thanks for the tip, Walt.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, AlanT said:

and for creating multiple indices for topics, title, etc. 

Publisher supports at most one Index. However, it also supports multiple levels in the index. So, you could create an index of hymn titles with one parent topic, and an index of hymn first lines with another parent topic, etc.

Here's a screenshot of a rough example:

[AlanT]

Looks like this can be made to work.  If nothing else, I could extract the auto-index and reformat as separate indices.

Thanks for the suggestion!

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome. You could also edit the index in place, adding a page break, for example. Or you could do it in multiple columns.