Cross-references, numbered chapters, additional fields

[OriolFM]

I have been using Publisher for a few months now. I liked it because of its intuitive layout and ease of use compared to Scribus or InDesign.

However, when I started using it to layout a project of mine, a pen and paper RPG book, I found that some critical parts of it were missing, namely:

1. Ability to number chapters/points by selecting the headers and formatting them as a numbered list. At the moment, I'm writing the numbers manually for the main chapters, but the subchapters are almost impossible to track, because if I have to add or modify anything, they won't self-update.
2. Cross-references are tough. TOCs work fine, as do indexes, and hyperlinks, but the text of the hyperlinks is fixed and can't be self-updated. Even a word processor like MS Word has the option of inserting cross-references and have the text be automatically the page number, the chapter number, or the text of the header (would be the anchor, in your case).
3. Automatic fields are very limited, to the point that besides the document metadata, the current date/time, or the current number of pages, it can't barely do a thing. Adding more would be great, or at least offer the option to script the fields in some way, in that case we could at least try to do so, by selecting properties of objects (like the page number of an anchor, for instance).

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, OriolFM said:

1. Ability to number chapters/points by selecting the headers and formatting them as a numbered list. At the moment, I'm writing the numbers manually for the main chapters, but the subchapters are almost impossible to track, because if I have to add or modify anything, they won't self-update.

This capability already exists, I believe, using a Paragraph Text Style and the options in Bullets and Numbering that I have marked below:

Unfortunately, I don't understand the use of those options well enough to explain it right now, either. I'll play around a bit and see if I can figure out an explanation. Or perhaps someone else who does understand it can help. They are apparently (from questions here) poorly understood, and as far as I can tell undocumented.................

 

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, OriolFM said:

2. Cross-references are tough. TOCs work fine, as do indexes, and hyperlinks, but the text of the hyperlinks is fixed and can't be self-updated. Even a word processor like MS Word has the option of inserting cross-references and have the text be automatically the page number, the chapter number, or the text of the header (would be the anchor, in your case).

Agreed. Cross-references are possible now, but very cumbersome given that for each reference to an item you need an auxiliary pair of linked text frames, pinned inline into the normal text frames. It should be simpler.

[OriolFM]

16 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

This capability already exists, I believe, using a Paragraph Text Style and the options in Bullets and Numbering that I have marked below:

Unfortunately, I don't understand the use of those options well enough to explain it right now, either. I'll play around a bit and see if I can figure out an explanation. Or perhaps someone else who does understand it can help. They are apparently (from questions here) poorly understood, and as far as I can tell undocumented.................

 

In MS Word and most of the programs I've worked with, it is enough to apply Bullets and Numbering to the heading style. The numbers will nest automatically in different levels of headings.

Here, it does not work. I tried different approaches, creating styles from scratch or adding bullets to existing ones, but I wasn't able to get them to work. I did not find any documentation whatsoever on how to do it.

[OriolFM]

16 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Agreed. Cross-references are possible now, but very cumbersome given that for each reference to an item you need an auxiliary pair of linked text frames, pinned inline into the normal text frames. It should be simpler.

Having anchors, the need for inserting text frames inside other text frames is absurd. IT should be possible to just cross-reference to an anchor. Headings would be in the list by default, and you can create them independently from headings, so it should be the right way to do it.

[walt.farrell]

4 hours ago, OriolFM said:

In MS Word and most of the programs I've worked with, it is enough to apply Bullets and Numbering to the heading style. The numbers will nest automatically in different levels of headings.

Here, it does not work. I tried different approaches, creating styles from scratch or adding bullets to existing ones, but I wasn't able to get them to work. I did not find any documentation whatsoever on how to do it.

Here are some examples.

First, I was wrong about needing to use the Name field in the Bullets and Numbering settings in the Paragraph Text Styles. It is not needed for the examples that follow.

This was created with two new Paragraph Text Styles, Numbered Heading 1 (based on Heading 1) and Numbered Heading 2 (based on Heading 2).

For Numbered Heading 2:

For Numbered Heading 1:

 

Here's the .afpub file for that simple case:simple-numbered-headings1.afpub

The key point about this use of numbering is that each set of linked Text Frames (a "story", in Publisher terminology) has a separate set of numbering for its headings.

Thus, if I had two linked text frames it would look like this, with the numbering running across the frames:

 

However, if I had two separate Text Frames (not linked), it would look like this:

I have not yet discovered a way to continue the numbering across multiple stories. My theory that using the "Name" field in Bullets and Numbering along with the Global setting would allow this has so far proven false, or I'm misusing it.

 

 

 

[OriolFM]

On 6/19/2021 at 5:11 PM, walt.farrell said:

I have not yet discovered a way to continue the numbering across multiple stories. My theory that using the "Name" field in Bullets and Numbering along with the Global setting would allow this has so far proven false, or I'm misusing it.

And that is exactly the problem I had.

In the book I'm working on I had 4 levels of headings. The first three were numbered, and the fourth wasn't, but the numbering on level 2 and 3 was wrong.

[garrettm30]

On 6/19/2021 at 10:11 AM, walt.farrell said:

I have not yet discovered a way to continue the numbering across multiple stories. My theory that using the "Name" field in Bullets and Numbering along with the Global setting would allow this has so far proven false, or I'm misusing it.

If I understand what you're trying to do, you can indeed number across multiple stories. You were right that the name field along with the global setting is indeed key, but if it is not working for you, then there may be some other setting not quite right. My first guess is that you may have overlooked the "Restart numbering" setting: the option "Any non-list" will cause it to break across stories.

Here is a very simple document with a very simple number list style used across two unlinked frames, just to demonstrate that numbering can continue across multiple stories.

numbering_across_stories.afpub

[Patrick Connor]