Incrementing pages out of order

[mark.arcane]

Hi,

 

I have a document with 3 pages, in this order:-

A. body page (contains a table with potential to overflow)

B. overflow page (contains space for table on 1st page to overflow to)

C. another body page

 

To implement matching marks, I need to run a sequence number for each page throughout the document.

 

On each page I have a text frame containing a rule which increments a global variable counter. A lot of my records don't overflow, they work fine.

 

When I have a record which uses the overflow page the sequence numbers on pages B and C are transposed. It alway goes back correct at the start of the next record.

 

It almost seems as if the last page © is being composed before the overflow page (B) but still being output after it. Could this be possible and if so how can I fix it?

 

Thanks.

[Dan Korn]

You're doing something way more complicated than necessary. You don't need to implement your own page counter. You don't even need a rule at all. All you need to is going into the text frame where you're putting down the page number, and in the Variable drop-down, select $pagenum and insert that. Or, if you really want to use a rule, check the "Re-evaluate this rule for every text flow" box and return FusionPro.Composition.currentPageNumber.

To implement matching marks, I need to run a sequence number for each page throughout the document.

So do you mean you want a page number for the entire output file, instead of a per-record page number? In that case, your rule can return FusionPro.Composition.pageNumberInJob.

It almost seems as if the last page © is being composed before the overflow page (B) but still being output after it. Could this be possible

Yes, that's exactly how FusionPro works. Since you can use a variable like $pagenum in a text frame, obviously FusionPro has to know the page numbers before it typesets them. So it has to compose any text flows which can overflow to new pages first, to figure out exactly how many pages there are in the record, and what the page number is for each page. Then it goes and composes all the other text flows (which don't overflow), and in fact, it's only in these flows that don't overflow where you can use the $pagenum and $pagecount variables.

and if so how can I fix it?

Use the $pagenum variable in the Text Editor, or a rule with the "Re-evaluate this rule for every text flow" box checked returning FusionPro.Composition.currentPageNumber (or FusionPro.Composition.pageNumberInJob).