UX: Drag & Drop Page to Master-Pages

[alexplus_de]

I wish I could create master pages by drag & drop a page to make it a master page.

 

[GarryP]

A nice idea, in theory, but it might be difficult to make it work in practice.

What would happen if, for instance, the page in question had text frames which were part of a chain and the whole chain wasn’t limited to that page? Would the text disappear in the new master? And how would the new chain be handled?

Also, what would happen to the contents of the page which you just created a master page from? Would it automatically use the new master as its master and what would happen to the contents of the original page? Would there be duplicates?

Those are just two things that popped into my head but I’m sure they won’t be the only potential problems.

Maybe if you explain more about exactly what you think should happen in all cases – as that’s what the developers would have to handle – your idea could be taken forward, or at least discussed further.

If you can’t describe what you want with a pretty good amount of detail then how can the developers know what you want? And then how can they know if they are doing what you want? And then what happens if they do it and what you get isn’t what you want?

[alexplus_de]

Hey Garry,

thank you for your quick reply.

Those are good questions. In my case, I

1. created new master pages and then
2. copy-pasted the selected objects to that page.
3. Then removed the original objects and
4. as you imagined, applied the master page to the original page

I would expect these steps done but 3. and 4. could also still be left to the user as they happen so quickly and keeping the control to the users what they want to do next. 

Step 1 was the challenging part as I had to look up the right document size, spacing etc. of this page and to keep them in mind until I get the master page creation dialogue. So this is what could be fixed with this feature.