Master Pages

Hello, One of my projects have about 30 different master pages. I have been working over ten years with this book and added and deleted master pages as necessary. Now the list of master pages is all in a mess. My question is how I can sort it numerically or alphabetically. I have tried to name them, for example: 01 Hope for a Future, 02 Two Bitter Disappointments, 03 Clarifying Symbolism etc. etc. And also A, B, C, D, etc. But nothing helps. How can I sort the master pages numerically or alphabetically in the list under Page Layout/Master Pages?
Lennart
Windows 10, Papyrus Author 11,07

Thatā€™s amazing! :star_struck: Iā€™d love to hear more about your project.

I think 30 Master Pages is the most Iā€™ve heard so far! Do you have one for each chapter, or do you have a special book format youā€™re working on?

At the moment, unfortunately thereā€™s no way to sort the Master Page types in the list viewā€“theyā€™re listed in the order theyā€™re created.

I can see that with your book, sorting them would be super helpful, and Iā€™ll definitely pass this improvement suggestion along. :+1:

OK, then I know, fine, and thank-you Sam for passing the suggestion on. Yes, I have one master-page for each chapter. Thatā€™s the only way I know of doing it. Is there any better way of doing chapters in Papyrus?
By the way, I deleted all the messed up master-pages and created new ones to get them in the right and, hopefully, final order. It ended up with ā€œonlyā€ 25 master-pages.

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This sounds like you want the chapter title to be displayed in the header line of each chapter. This could be done using the headertitle(1) function in the header line of the master page. This way you only need one master page which adapts its content to the current chapter.

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That sounds really interesting, perhaps it could revolutionize my work with Papyrus Author. Unfortunately I donā€™t know exactly what the ā€œheadertitle(1) functionā€ is. Iā€™ll try to find it in the manual. It may be above my level of skill, though.

Itā€™s a function that can be used in cross-references similar to the placeholders for page number or number of pages. The argument (1) is the hierarchy level of the chapter title that will be returned.

To use it, make sure that your page layout has some space for the header area (Document > Page Layout > Header area).

  1. Double click in the header area to go to the master page
  2. Right click in the header area
  3. Select ā€œInsert Variable Title 1st Levelā€
  4. Click on the grey text frame to return to the main text

If there is a Chapter or 1st level heading in the main text, then it will be displayed in the header area. If you have another chapter on another page, then the header title will change on that page and continue until the next chapter.

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Thank-you Glucose, there is much more under the hood to Papyrus that I evidently never tried, even if I used Papyrus for many years, since the early 90s I think.

The problem is that I want no text in the header area on the first page of the chapter. And that is probably hard to get this way.
Lennart

There is a way to do this:
Create different master pages, one with header area, the other without. Then, in the ā€˜Layoutā€™ dialog choose ā€˜Assign Page Rangeā€™. There on the right you can assign different master pages for different book pages.

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The headertitle() function is used for variable headers, of course. If you want no header area at all, use @joeyā€™s suggestion to create a separate master paster without the header area. This master page can be reused many times by assigning it to the pages where the chapters start. There is no automatic mode in Papyrus to do this however.

Iā€™ve started using this ā€œlazyā€ way for my fiction. I donā€™t put anything in the header. Instead, I put the page number and the author or title (different left and right) in the footer for the body pages. That way, when my page numbers change, I will have no header on the chapter start pages.

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Do you mean you have each chapter title in the footer area? Or do you skip chapter titles altogether?

I put page number and author name on the left page. Book title and page number on the right. Iā€™ve seen it done in other books. It looks okay to me.

LEFTHAND SIDE:
1 Author Name

RIGHTHAND SIDE:
Book Title 2

In the footer.

Sorry for all the replys, but I want to point out that page 1 should be on the right side. Odd numbers are on the right.

If all your chapters start on the right side, you sometimes will get an empty left page. In such a case, do you still have the author name and the page number on that empty page?

I looked at one of my Dean Koontz books and when he has a blank page between chapters, there is no header or footer text, itā€™s blank.

That blank page can happen when I have my chapters set to start on the right side. So to avoid any text on the blank page I would have to (when totally done editing) assign a different master to the blank page. But I would rather avoid all that and just have all my chapters begin on the next page, thus avoiding that dreaded blank page.

I have noticed that several books donā€™t have any blank pages, chapters start at either side. True, many recommend to start all chapters on the right side, but recommendations may vary from decade to decade, and from publisher to publisher. As for me, I always use separate headers for each chapter, and have to make as many master pages as there are chapters. With Papyrus I donā€™t find this too complicated, though. I write non-fiction and with fiction books it may not be so important with chapter headers, I suppose (Sorry, Iā€™m from Sweden, and I canā€™t express myself very good in English).

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