RE: Instructor-Student, A-B flows

["Snavely, Deborah" <dsnavely@xxxxxxxx>]

Joel, 

Most solutions for this communications layout require special tags to handle
the "page numbering," as you discovered. Certainly all the ones  I've dealt
with. However, you can build matching cross-reference formats that pull in
the page numbers from your student or instructor text as needed (damn the
variables, full speed ahead). Example:

If your instructor and student flows have parallel page numbers with the
paragraph tags 
     I-page# [I:<n+>] and S-page# [S:<n+>]

Your cross-reference formats can refer to
     Instructor: 
	<$paratext[heading1]> on page 
	<$paranumonly[I-page#]>
and
     Student: 
	<$paratext[heading1]> on page 
	<$paranumonly[S-page#]>

I think that would do it for you. It still doesn't get you functional page
numbers in the cross-ref dialog box, but nothing's perfect. This method
should work whether you're using the same flow or two parallel flows. As
always, "your mileage may vary."

Deborah Snavely
Senior Technical Writer
consulting at Visa
standard disclaimers apply


***********************************************
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 09:17:33 -0600
From: Joel Van Valin <joelv@pbs.com>
Subject: Re: Instructor-Student, A-B flows

The discussion about Instructor-Student flows
brings to mind a training manual I wrote a few
months ago. The trainer wanted trainer
notes on the left pages, and student content
on the right. The students should only recieve
student content, but the trainer's manual had
to have the same page numbers so the trainer
could refer to them.

I ended up using a single flow, using Trainer
and Student paragraph tags set to start at
top of the page. To create the student manual
I printed the odd pages only; to get the trainer
manual all pages were printed.

The problem was the page numbering - all the
page numbers in the Student manual would
be screwy (1, 3, 5). And there is no way in Frame
(that I know of) to give different master pages
or different flows separate page numbers.

What I did instead was create a special flow
on the right (student) master page, where the
page number would be. I placed a special
tag with an auto-number that incremented
by one - so on each right page, it would
increase by 1 and masquerade as a page number.
The only drawback to this solution is
cross-referencing-a cross reference would
give you the wrong "page number". Fortunately
there was no need to cross reference this document.

But for next time ... does anyone know of
a more elegant solution?


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