T. J. Frazier wrote:
Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
...
Way back when, I wrote some unnecessarily complex instructions about
using page styles in book design, because I didn't know any better. I
think those instructions are (a) still on my website, (b) still in
the Writer Guide, and (c) still misleading lots of people. One of
these years I'll change them to describe the easy method first, since
that suits the needs of most people.
Perhaps you'd like to add your comments to the thread on the forum?
--Jean
Jean,
To my mind, the fault lies not in your instructions, but in the
feature itself. It cries out for a Wizard, to help the user through
all the advance planning, and all the little but critical details.
Still, if you or someone provides better instructions, I will be glad
to see them. Though I make extensive use of paragraph and character
styles, I find page styles too intimidating to try (but then, I don't
do any printing). /tj
I often use a complete set of page styles for book projects. It should
be useful to build up an entire set of page styles via a chapter in the
guide (or a standalone guide) for general page-style usage. That means
having a page style for a cover page, followed by a copyright page
style, etc. for all the front matter that one might expect, even though
few books would have all of those actual pages. The Chicago Manual of
Styles contains ample exposition about such pages and whether or not
these pages are recto or verso or either (right/left).
Ditto for the book chapters where each chapter typically has a
first-page style (a recto page, almost always), followed by alternating
left and right page styles. And likewise for any back-matter
pages--indexes, etc.
Having such a complete custom set could then serve as a basis for
further customization. So, what is really needed is a template
containing these page styles already included. Pretty simple stuff, if
those concepts are explained adequately.
Gary
--
Gary Schnabl
2775 Honorah
Detroit MI 48209
(734) 245-3324
