Trouble with positioning of numbers in book

[Ormhaugen]

I'm testing the book function in Affinity Publisher 2.1.0. I now have a book with 14 chapters. It's mostly working OK (TOC, moving chapters etc.), but positioning of numbers gives me some problems. I use facing pages, and I want even numbers to the left on the left pages, odd numbers I want to the right on the right pages. All the chapters I have set to start with the first page to the right. But for some chapters this comes out wrong. If a chapter ends on a right page, then the next chapter starts to the left, but with an odd number to the left where there should have been an even number (see attached pdf). Any ideas how to fix this?

Geir

 

numbers - facing pages.pdf

[Old Bruce]

Do you use sections? 

[Ormhaugen]

No, not sections

[MikeTO]

You need to select both Merge and Pad from Stray Pages.

Cheers

[Ormhaugen]

That's one step forward, thank you Mike. But I'm not quite through. I'll try to explain:

If I now export the book with area "All chapters" chosen, AffPub does something odd: if a chapter ends with an even number, say page 16, I get two facing pages, the end of the chapter left, then a blank page (area) to the right. The next chapter starts with an odd number to the right, say 17, but now a blank facing page (area) to the left. 

If I export the book with area "All chapters as pages" I get no blank pages, but now another odd thing happens: a chapter ends with an odd number, correctly to the right, say 29. AffPub then jumps over number 30, the next chapter starts with 31, the page placed to the left and the number to the right on that page.

I don't understand what's going on, if someone can shed som light on this, I'll be glad. To me the only solution now seems to be to collect the book by starting with the first chapter and the adding pages from file, 14 times in my case. That would work, but is very rigid compared to the book function.

 

number - All chapters.pdf numbers - All chapters as pages.pdf

[Old Bruce]

Making a book from documents using facing pages requires some 'Prep' work. To work well the chapters need to be set up to have an even number pages. All of them would need to start on the Right. None of them should start on any page other than the default 1 (one). The page numbers (in each document) should have a defined and applied Paragraph Style (call it Page numbers) which uses Away from Spine for its alignment. This will should do away with the result you see here

 

[Ormhaugen]

Thanks for helping

Quote

chapters need to be set up to have an even number pages

This is how QuarkExpress handles chapters in a book. I'm making a yearbook with many authors, the articles are of different length so it would be a nigtmare to adjust.

Quote

Paragraph Style (call it Page numbers) which uses Away from Spine for its alignment

I have this, doesn't seem to matter.

But, I have found a solution, though not automatic: If I change the starting page from right to left in the chapters causing trouble, and exporting area "All chapters as pages" everything seems to work OK. You then of cause have to have the chapters in the final order. So you don't have the same freedom moving chapters up/down. But it works.

I miss Ventura Publisher taking care of this already in the 90's

Geir

[MikeTO]

7 hours ago, Ormhaugen said:

That's one step forward, thank you Mike. But I'm not quite through. I'll try to explain:

If I now export the book with area "All chapters" chosen, AffPub does something odd: if a chapter ends with an even number, say page 16, I get two facing pages, the end of the chapter left, then a blank page (area) to the right. The next chapter starts with an odd number to the right, say 17, but now a blank facing page (area) to the left. 

Yes, that's the way it works. I've reported this issue - a trailing blank right page at the end of the one chapter will cause the next chapter to be padded with a blank left page, resulting in two blank pages. I expected that Merge would merge the two blank pages but I'm told this is as designed.

I assume it's because the blank right page of the first chapter isn't truly blank, it presumably has a header or footer from its master page and likely a blank text frame linked to the previous page. But regardless, this isn't what I would want and I think that Publisher should merge this 'blank' page or at least provide an option to do so.

This limitation requires you to manually trim excess pages from chapters before printing or exporting. You'd have to delete any 'blank' right pages from chapters. The problem with doing this is then if you need more space, auto flow doesn't work properly. When you shift click the overset icon to auto flow, Publisher will blindly create two more pages, a right page for the current spread and a left page in a new spread. You probably just wanted the right page for the current spread. Regardless, Publisher won't link the new frames so you'll have to do it manually. If you have to go to all this trouble, you might as well turn Merge and Pad off and just set the length of each chapter manually to achieve the outcome you want.

If you do it manually, then you can decide if a blank page has a master applied to it and thus a header and/or footer shown, whereas if you let Publisher do it, any trailing blank pages you left at the end of a chapter will have a master applied while blank pages that Publisher added via Pad will be completely blank. I'd rather have more control over this, too.

[MikeTO]

Also please see this post for some more details