Master Pages

Papyrus Author Questions & Help
#1

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

#2

That’s amazing! :star_struck: I’d love to hear more about your project.

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

At the moment, unfortunately there’s no way to sort the Master Page types in the list view–they’re listed in the order they’re created.

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

#3

OK, then I know, fine, and thank-you Sam for passing the suggestion on. Yes, I have one master-page for each chapter. That’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 “only” 25 master-pages.

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#4

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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#5

That sounds really interesting, perhaps it could revolutionize my work with Papyrus Author. Unfortunately I don’t know exactly what the “headertitle(1) function” is. I’ll try to find it in the manual. It may be above my level of skill, though.

#6

It’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 “Insert Variable Title 1st Level”
  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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#7

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

#8

There is a way to do this:
Create different master pages, one with header area, the other without. Then, in the ‘Layout’ dialog choose ‘Assign Page Range’. There on the right you can assign different master pages for different book pages.

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#9

The headertitle() function is used for variable headers, of course. If you want no header area at all, use @joey’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.