After you have a good understanding of your data source, it is recommended to start building the pagination requirements before you even begin to add content into your Document Template. Pagination is highlighted, in detail, in the Pagination section of the documentation. However, you should know why we recommend that you consider this as one of your first steps.

 

Before you begin your design, we recommend using pencil and paper to draw out what your document will consist of. Questions such as the following should be presented when thinking about the pagination of the resulting document:

 

- Does my document contain headers and footers? If yes, do these change from page to page?

- Does my document contain content or formatting in the left or right side regions?

- What are the page dimensions that I need for my document? Do these dimensions change at all?

- What orientation should my document output be? Does this change from a page to the next one?

- Do I want certain pages of my document to be repeated or displayed based upon my data source?

 

By asking yourself questions of this nature, you will begin to build your document before actually designing it in the Publisher. Perhaps you may even want to sketch pages and mark the dimensions, or the headers and footers. This will provide a great reference for you as you work with the Pagination feature to create different layouts and page sets accordingly.

 

You can read more about layouts and page sets in the Terminology section of the help documentation. We encourage this practice of thinking about pagination as a mean to assisting you in designing the layouts and structure before even adding content to your Document Template. The next step is to consider the content and any dynamic behavior.