Tony, thanks for the information.
As to the question of 'why,' it's just as you say. I'm trying to out-process the word processor.
In fact, I'm creating a VB set for formatting film scripts, which utilize a complex set of rules. I created styles for each of the types of paragraphs used in a script, and some vb code which goes through the script after it's finished and conforms the document to the conventions of scripts.
Relevant to this particular effort, each dialogue-style paragraph is preceeded by a paragraph style made for the character's name.
i.e.
Personally I think this kind of activity is
contrary to the nature of Word. You give
Word a set of rules, and you give it the
document content and it word processes
the two together to make a complete
document; it adjusts automatically for
different paper sizes, different printers,
etc. If you want to post-process the
result you have a difficult time ahead of
you. What effect are you looking to
achieve? Is there not some way you
could use Word's rules to achieve it?
I have the character and dialogue paragraphs set to always keep together. Sometimes, when there is a very long speech near the end of a page, it leaves an unacceptably large white space at the bottom of the page so that it can keep the entire character and speech together.
The common solution in scripts is to break the speech at the bottom of the page, adding the parenthetical "(MORE)" at the bottom of that page, and starting the next page with the character's name with an added (CONT'D). i.e.
Personally I think this kind of activity is
contrary to the nature of Word.You give
Word a set of rules, and you give it the
document content and it
word processes
the two together to make a complete
document; it adjusts automatically for
different paper sizes, different printers,
etc. If you want to post-process the
-----------------page break
result you have a difficult time ahead of
you. What effect are you looking to
achieve? Is there not some way you
could use Word's rules to achieve it?
I want to use the power of the computer to free me from the drudgery of searching through each document manually and making these changes.
And to make matters worse, I will make a corollary operation which will go through the document and REMOVE all of those "(MORE)" and "(CONT'D)" and extra character names in case I want to re-write some of the text and change the page breaks.
If I had the money to do so at this time, I'd just buy one of the off-the-shelf one-trick-pony script-writing word processors. But I've got to sell a script to pay for it.
In my defense, I am heavily using Word's templates, styles, pagination, headers, footers, and summary-tracking features.
Again, I thank you for your help on this - I appreciate your sharing of your time and experience.
-Curt