🚀 go-pugleaf

I think there are several ways you could go, depending on your constraints:
* Keep the content in one set of "L" files, and the second page size in a set of "B" files set up as container that import the corresponding L content and reformat it to size.
* Use one set of files, with a set of two blank template files, one for B and one for L that are imposed as needed. Obviously, all the tag names and such have to be identical.
* Use a single set of files but output to two different PDF sheet sizes and ignore the white space.

Art

Art:

Thanks.

I'm hoping I can perhaps create an Acrobat job settings that will enable me to maintain the content in a single FrameMaker book; the maintenance and production headaches of parallel content are ones I would prefer to avoid.

I say "I'm hoping" cuz' it turns out there are multiple Asian B5 standards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size), so I'm currently determining which one the customer is thinking of...

Cheers, thanks, & have a great weekend,
Riley

Hi:

For what it's worth, what I've done so far was to create a new, separate Adobe PDF Converter printer and configured it to use 176mm x 250mm pages.

I then printed the FrameMaker book's U.S. Letter pages through that printer.

The result was acceptable, although some visual design elements were truncated from the unusually thin page margins. It's for that reason that I began this follow-up post with "what I've done so far" -- it remains to be seen if this quick-and-dirty approach will suffice, or whether I'll need to refine the solution a bit more...

(I really, really want to avoid developing two parallel FrameMaker books with different page sizes if I can -- the administrative headaches of parallel content give me a headache just thinking about them...)

Cheers, thanks, & hope this helps,
Riley

Use three directories - one for the master FM document, and one "build" directory for each of the formats you need. When it's time to build, copy all the files into the relevant build directory and do your stylesheet applying, book regenerating, and printing in the build directory.

If you decide to handle it in FrameMaker (rather than Acrobat), then use two stylesheets - one with all the formats you need and letter-sized pages, and one with no formats and with B5 sized pages. This way you only need to manage one stylesheet for most formatting controls (except page layouts), and you only need to import the page layouts when you want to build a document or "toggle" it between different page sizes. How similar these two stylesheets are to each other (on the master pages) depends on how much you think you can get away with:

If the page sizes are similar, use different pages sizes but identical text frames on the master pages if you can. This would give you identical pagination although the margins would be different. You might be able to find an optimum "compromise" text frame size that fits both page sizes reasonably well.

If you can't use the same text frame sizes on the master pages, then of course your pagination is going to change, but at least try to use text frames that are the same WIDTH. This avoids needing to manually adjust side-head areas, pictures, and table widths every time you change the page size.

A small update.

As I stated in my earlier post (#3), I initially tried creating a new, separate Adobe PDF printer configured to work with pages of the desired size. The idea was to print the FrameMaker book of US Letter pages through that printer. Well, it worked well enough to enable me to avoid a parallel set of content...

Then the customer tried printing the US Letter sized PDF through a similarly customized PDF printer. That put the US Letter PDF's contents on B5 pages, albeit at a loss of the bookmarks.

But the customers were satisfied with the printed output; they were happy to view the bookmarked PDF in US Letter and print on B5 paper. So, I'm happy to say that they're just "Cuisinarting" taking the US Letter PDFs for printing.

Boy, talk about dodging a workflow bullet...

Cheers, thanks to all who responded, and hope this helps,
Riley