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[CS5.5] issue with stacking order on spreads when pages change

Jun 27, 2012 9:12 PM

Have recently had a situation where items on a right hand page have "disappeared" behind an item placed over the reader's spread in a layout using facing pages.

 

For example,

 

Picture 2.png

this spread has 3 elements: an item of type per page, both brought to front; and a green background sent to back. all fine so far.

 

i have then deleted the last two pages from the file... still going great guns...

 

Picture 5.png

i then delete the first two pages from the file... then the preverbial hits the fan.

 

Picture 6.png

the type on page two is gone! oh no!!! the reality is that the type is now BEHIND the green background.

 

I am aware that had the green background been split in two at the spine, the result would be this:

 

Picture 8.png

but it's too late now.

 

has anyone else experienced this phenomenon and is it safe to call this a "bug"? anyone wanting to attempt the following steps can download a PDF containing the indesign file as an attachment within the pdf from this url: http://colecandoo.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/spreadfail.pdf

 

colly

 
Replies
  • Currently Being Moderated
    Jun 28, 2012 12:00 AM   in reply to cdflash

    Do you want the green background on all pages? If so, putting it on the master page (and not releasing it on the document pages) will prevent your problem from happening.

     
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    Jun 28, 2012 12:45 AM   in reply to cdflash

    @Colly – FWIW it's already present in InDesign CS3. Never noticed before, because I used master pages or separate layers for background and text frames.
    I'd call it a bug, because removing pages should not mess up the stacking order of page items on different pages.

     

    Uwe

     
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    Jun 28, 2012 1:03 AM   in reply to cdflash

    @Colly – and the bug is hitting always if you remove a even number of pages starting at page 1. If you remove an odd number of pages, the stacking order is preserved. If you remove 1 page two times in a row starting at page 1, the bug hits again.

     

    Uwe

     
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    Jun 28, 2012 1:59 AM   in reply to Laubender

    Although the green block is, for practical purposes, on both pages, to InDesign, it's really only assigned to the left page of the spread. For example, if you start with this:

    ss1.jpg

    …which has a green box in the background, spanning both pages of each spread, and yellow boxes on odd pages and magenta boxes on odds…

     

    …and you delete page one, you get this:

    ss2.jpg

    …where the yellow and magenta boxes have switched sides, but notice that the green box that had been across both pages is now only on the odd pages. That's because the green boxes were actually assigned to the even pages, which have now shifted to become the odd pages, and the box stayed with it's page.

     

    Now, here's what happens when you delete page 2:

    ss3.jpg

    Except for page one, which hasn't moved or changed, the screen shots from removing page one and page two look the same, because I only removed one page at a time. That caused the pages to switch sides.

     

    Now, here's what happens when you remove pages one and two at the same time:

    ss4.jpg

    This is what you are getting. As best as I can guess, the reason that the green box is above the yellow boxes is because the left page of the spread is higher in stacking order than the page on the right. My guess is that the stacking order of the objects on each page is reaffirmed when pages are deleted. And in this case, I don't think it matters whether you delete them one at a time or two. Here is a screen shot of what it looks like when I delete page one, then delete page two right afterward (actually, since page two had become page one, I had to delete page one the second time to delete the original page two, but you know what I mean):

    ss5.jpg

    This screenshot looks the same as the previous, even though this one had two pages deleted one at a time, and the previous one had two pages deleted together. I can't say whether this is a bug or not, but I assume that the engineers at Adobe didn't choose this behavior on purpose. It's probably a side-effect of some other choice that probably makes perfect sense.

     

    I think the answer is to either  place objects that span a spread on the master, or to use layers if the master option isn't practical for the job you are doing.

     
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    Jun 28, 2012 2:53 AM   in reply to Michael Gianino

    I think the answer is to either  place objects that span a spread on document pages on the master, or to use layers if the master option isn't practical for the job you are doing.

     

    @Michael – this is certainly true. But if we get a document from a customer or a colleague to work on, we could run into problems with that bug.

     

    Uwe

     
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    Jun 28, 2012 3:18 AM   in reply to cdflash

    @Colly – I found something like a workaround, something you could do that the bug is not hitting:

     

    Before removing the pages, uncheck "Allow Selected Spread to Shuffle", so that all spreads in the pages panel get [] like that:

     

    [1]
    [2-3]
    [4-5]

     

    That should prevent the reordering of the page items on a spread.

     

    In your case [2-3] (spread 2 of your doc) should do!

     

    Uwe

     
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