Gary Schnabl wrote:
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.
I agree. The explanation should, I think, go somewhere in the Writer
Guide, but the entire set of page styles, all set up and ready to use,
would need to be a standalone document and saved as a template (as you
suggest later in your note). I'm working on just such a template --
based on the page styles and sequencing for the printed books -- and
will make it available here when it's ready for critical review.
Of course, that doesn't stop anyone else from doing the same if they
feel motivated to do so. :-)
I wrote a partial explanation, which is in one of the styles chapters
in the Writer Guide, following the latest changes Michele and I made
to those chapters. Or maybe it's in the chapter on formatting pages?
The master docs chapter has some too, but I can't recall whether I
have yet updated that one to clear out some of my earlier complicating
misconceptions.
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....
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.
Most books do not need alternating left and right page styles, and
using them actually makes some things (like dropping a landscape page
into the middle of portrait pages) more difficult to do. That was my
biggest mistake when beginning to work with page styles: I didn't
realise that *one* style, set up as mirrored pages, would do the job
for all chapter pages except the first page (in most cases; there are
exceptions).
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.
Agreed. I'll be concentrating on the page styles in the template I'm
doing, so someone else (you?) might want to add detail to the
paragraph, list, and character styles -- and the explanations for
using them.
--Jean
