Re: Forcing Footnotes to be on the same page they are refered to

[hedley_finger@xxxxxxxxxxx]

To whom, to whit (owlishly):

> >I am using Frame 6.0.  At times the footnotes do not appear on the same
> >page as the sentence referring to the footnote.
>
> 'FrameMaker sometimes can't keep footnotes in the same column as the
> corresponding footnote reference' (page 180,  Adobe FrameMaker 6.0:
> User Guide). This is true and we have been asking, first, Frame Corp.
> and, then, Adobe to fix this for at least eight years. There are
> hacks that will compensate for this malfunction (check the archives)
> but no real fixes.

Don't think you wouldn't have the same problem in the real world.  Back
when men were men and women were women, the task of the book editor was to
cut up galleys and paste them onto layout sheets to indicate to the
compositor / layout artist where page breaks, cuts (photos and graphics to
you, sonny), tables, and footnotes were to fall.

So what do you do when a footnote reference falls near the bottom of a
page, thus dictating that the footnote be placed at the bottom of the page,
thus forcing the reference onto the next page, thus dictating that the
footnote fall on the next page and the resultant hole at the foot of the
previous page thus dictating that the reference flow back to the foot of
the previous page ... I think that this is where we came in.

In the real world, wmwmawww, we would:

@ start the footnote on the current page and finish it at the foot of the
next page,
@ break paragraphs into smaller paragraphs, adding extra lines to the page,
forcing the reference and footnote to the next page (even feathering or
carding paragraphs and lines to force that reference over), or
@ put the footnote on the next page, as FrameMaker has done in this case.

What Graham Forbes, Keeper of the Footnote Flame of Perseverance, and
others -- including myself -- are irritated about is that FM can't even
balance footnotes evenly across facing pages of a double-spread, or break a
footnote across successive pages at all in any sensible fashion.  Nosirree,
the entire footnote gotta be on one page or t'other.

I think Adobe are scared that if footnoting, working in double-spreads,
balancing of facing pages with feathering of headings only, and other such
everyday practice of bookmaking were to be implemented, they might be faced
with having to sell many copies of FrameMaker to commercial publishers.
:o)  Do you know that book publishers still create indexes that are totally
uncoupled from the text, in Cindex, Sky Index, Macrex, etc. so that, if the
pagination changes, the indexer cannot simply regenerate it but has to
manually fix all the page references?  Unbelievable.  But, until Adobe
fixes FrameMaker so that it can do the everyday layout tasks routinely
performed by book publishers, they are still going to persist with these
crappy work practices and do even biographies and novels in Quark Xpress.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications/Technical communicator and FrameMaker mentor
MYOB Australia <http://www.myob.com.au/>
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151
Australia
<mailto:hedley_finger@myob.com.au>
Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421
Mob. +61 412 461 558



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