List of Effective Pages

[Phil Fountain]

It's been six years since I asked this question and I thought I would ask it again. Is FrameMaker the only application that can make a List of Effective Pages in a technical manual? I have heard that InDesign can do it but I can not find any documentation for it.

[Barb Binder]

The steps aren't even well-documented in FrameMaker.  As far as I know, my blog has one of the only step-by-step references online for generating LEPs in FrameMaker:

Adobe FrameMaker: How to Create a List of Effective Pages - Rocky Mountain Training

I've never had anyone ask about it in InDesign. So let's think about it. Here are the steps in Fm:

• Running heads. In InDesign you can override the heads so that you can type in them on a body page with Ctrl Sh Click.
• Chapter numbering. You can number the chapters in the InDesign book window.
• Add a List of Paragraphs. This would have to be a table of contents in InDesign, but you can have more than one defined for a file.
• Variables. InDesign has variables and revision numbers are short so you won't get into the "variables won't word wrap" issue in InDesign.
• Update the list. Update the TOC to pull the variables off the page.

So yes. Although I've never thought about it in InDesign, the equivalent features are all available. Come back and let me know if you get stuck along the way.

[Phil Fountain]

Thanks Eric,

I’m not currently using LEPs but I’m passing it on to a friend who is evaluation the software to use. InDesign is much more user friendly. I’m sure I will be using it in the future.

Thanks,

Phil Fountain

[Barb Binder]

Hmmmm, Eric? I get called "Bob" a lot, but Eric is a first!

If your friend doesn't already know how to create an LEP in Fm, send along the link to my blog. Then s/he should be able to recreate the steps in InDesign. Again, I didn't keystroke the whole thing the other day, but it seems like it should work just fine. I'd be curious to hear the results.