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I kinda like chapter-page numbering. It's a quick indicator of what chapter I'm in as I flip through a book, regardless of whether the chapter name is at the top of the page. But I have no data about how customers feel.
We recently switched to consecutive page numbering for the body chapters, but we put the page number on the lower-right side of each page. This is OK online (whether page numbers are relevant online is a separate discussion), but if I do a 2-sided print out of a pdf, the page number gets lost in the gutter on the left-hand page. A better solution would be to center the page number in the footer, but that space is already eaten up by confidentiality and copyright info in our books.
--- On Thu, 12/3/09, Dan Goldstein <DGoldstein -at- riverainmedical -dot- com> wrote:
From: Dan Goldstein <DGoldstein -at- riverainmedical -dot- com>
Subject: RE: Chapter-page numbering, reasons for
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Thursday, December 3, 2009, 10:05 AM
We don't use Frame, but we used to use the same numbering method in Word, and for the same outdated reason you cite below. When we finally switched to regular page numbering, everyone was happier.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nancy Allison
> Sent: Thursday, December 03, 2009 10:01 AM
> To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> Subject: Chapter-page numbering, reasons for
>
> I have been updating inherited templates. All of them use
> chapter-page numbering (1-1, 2-1, 3-1, etc.)
>
> I can think of only one reason for this technique, and it's
> outdated. When I was a wee temporary secretary putting myself
> through graduate school much too long ago, I sometimes was
> asked to insert change pages, which came through the US mail,
> into such industry publications as massive regulation
> documentation sets that were many volumes long with thousands
> of pages in three-ring binders. I physically tossed the old
> pages and stuck the new ones in. The chapnum-pagenum system
> made it possible to replace only the pages until the end of
> just that chapter and preserve correct page numbering.
>
> (Even then, the change pages sometimes were given alpha
> subnumbers. If, in an immense doc set, you replaced page
> 1,356 to 1,362 with 10 new pages, the new page numbers
> included 1,362a, 1,362b, 1,362c, and 1,362d.)
>
> Now that we send out updated PDFs and nobody physically
> replaces pages, is there any compelling reason to keep using
> chapnum-pagenums? I know from experience is it a major source
> of grief for writers who are less skilled with FrameMaker
> (and I remember my own painful experiences vividly!) I have
> spent a lot of time coaching people, time I could have better
> spent on other tasks.
>
> Is it worth doing? Do you do it? If you made the changeover
> in your company, did you get any objections?
>
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Try the latest Doc-To-Help 2009 v3 risk-free for 30-days at: http://www.doctohelp.com/
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