Auto numbering

[jack_zucker@adobeforums.com]

When will indesign have auto numbering? I just finished a 300 page guitar book ([url]www.sheetsofsound.net[/url]) which used Chapter.ExerciseNum.Page in the heading. It was a bear to keep in sync. I had written the doc originally with Framemaker which handled the numbering sweetly but was too slow.

I was hoping the pagemaker edition would add this feature but it doesn't.

Jaz

[Dominic_Hurley@adobeforums.com]

Too slow! In my experience, FM runs on the smell of an oily rag and has always been faster than ID. But in answer to your question - only Adobe knows the answer and they're not talking.

[jack_zucker@adobeforums.com]

FM can't handle big graphics. My book was a music book and every page contained an approximately monochrome 7x10 @300 dpi tif file. FM couldn't keep up with the scrolling - This on a 3gz machine with a 60gb drive and 1gb of memory. ID is very zippy for this type of thing.

[JohnO@adobeforums.com]

>It was a bear to keep in sync.

I imagine. I 'grew up' on PM, so doing separate sections as separate docs is
the way I did it. The ability to do multiple masters--say one for each
section--is what I use now. You still have to fool around with the headers,
but it's a bit easier.

--neat book, I'm keeping that url handy.

-John O

[jack_zucker@adobeforums.com]

Multiple masters doesn't help much when you've got over 200 exercises in your book. Creating 200 master pages doesn't save you any time. Not sure how creating master pages would help with the numbering issue either.

My numbersystem looks like this:

3.2.5 (5th page of exercise 2, chapter 3)

My book is formatted with as a book with 8 chapters with ~40 pages per chapter. It still boggles my mind that adobe omits this feature. There is one aftermarket numbering package listed on adobe's site. I downloaded it and it requires you to enter in a unique tag name everytime you want to add a new figure or number to your system. How dumb is that? On top of that, I emailed them and the president or engineer starts fighting with me about how that's necessary. I asked him if he had ever used Framemaker or Pagemaker's numbering and he never answered. Go figure...

[JohnO@adobeforums.com]

> 3.2.5 (5th page of exercise 2, chapter 3)

Ok, I had to look at your samples to get a grip. Never mind the master
pages.
<putting on my project manager hat and asking a rhetorical question...> Do
the readers need that detail, or is it mainly a method for *you* to keep
track of what's in the book?

--Some of our writers have 'things' they want to include in our publications
simply because they've always been there, and that's the way we did it
before and the time before that. Every so often I have to ask them to
justify these 'things' in terms of how they affect sales, the user
experience, and the project completion date. I may be off base, and I
apologize in advance if I am, but at a glance your numbering system tweaks
my 'justify it' sensor. :-)

-John O

[jack_zucker@adobeforums.com]

The whole problem is that with musical examples, it's hard to come up with a descriptive term to illustrate the subtle differences between exercises. Therefore, you have to have some type of numbering system. At the very least, you need something like:

"Pentatonic arpeggios Variation 1"
"Pentatonic arpeggios Variation 2".
"Pentatonic arpeggios Variation 3".
etc.

Many books do in fact utilize that methodology. I beta tested using that scheme along with using the 3 tier numbering scheme. As a software write, I regularly use hierarchical numbering in functional specifications but I was surprised that universally, every guitarist on my beta team (10 total) liked the 3-tier hierarchical numbering system best.

I could have simplied it by putting the chapter number in the master page. Then , I would have only had to number the exercise and the page of the exercise by hand.

My assumption is that Adobe did some market analysis and determined that the clientele of Framemaker consisted largely of engineering organizations which wanted hierarchical numbering while Quark's customers were art and graphics shops designing brochures and advertising and as such , don't require hierarchical numbering so Adobe didn't find it to be important.

I thought the 1.1 with the pagemaker plug-in would have given me numbering but no such luck.

(Unless you count numbered lists) :-)

Jaz

[JohnO@adobeforums.com]

> every guitarist on my beta team (10 total) liked the 3-tier hierarchical
numbering system best.

Well, so it's their fault you have to do all that work. Blame it on the
guitarists. :-)

Some layout jobs just aren't any fun, but at least you get all the money on
this one. FWIW, autonumbering is a fairly common request, you might wander
over to the Feature Request forum and state your case.

-John O

[Jens Schulze]

If you are working under Windows, I can send you a little tool that I have
written that provides chapter numbering based on different paragraph styles
five levels deep, maybe it fits your needs. Send me a mail to
[email]jens@trickbetrueger.org[/email] and use a useful topic and text in your mail to
bypass my spam filter, and tell me if you need it for ID2 or IDCS. It's
almost free of charge (in fact it is postcard ware, if you like it send me a
real snail mail postcard), and I'm open for new feature ideas. I really
should think of adding it to the share repository.

Jens

[jack_zucker@adobeforums.com]

Thanks Jens,

Email sent. Subject: Indesign CS numbering