Improving Formatting Speed

Arbortext Editor formats a document when it previews or publishes a document for printing. You can monitor formatting by watching the status bar at the bottom of the Arbortext Editor window. Many documents are completely formatted in two passes, with the generated text created in the first pass and positioned during the second, but some complicated documents can require additional formatting.

If your document contains page numbers or other locators in an index or table of contents, the time required for formatting can sometimes be cut in half by enabling pass reduction. This eliminates one of the two expected formatting passes by overlaying page numbers directly into the space reserved for them during the first formatting pass rather than making another formatting pass to exactly position the page number. Pass reduction is enabled by default.

Pass reduction settings are overridden by using All passes or Force, all passes. In both cases, Arbortext Editor will perform as many formatting passes as needed to precisely position all page elements. Pass reduction can also be disabled by using the APTNOOVERLAYPAGENUMBERS environment variable.

The results of the pass reduction operation are displayed on the status bar. If the document formats completely, nothing will be displayed; otherwise the status bar will contain a refmt-needed message.

This message is generated because:

• Either the page number is too large for the space reserved for it (for example, trying to put page number 100 in a two-digit page number space) or

• There is unfilled white space in the number (for example, putting page number 99 in a three-digit reserved space)

The first condition will always result in a refmt-needed message. You can choose the conditions under which one of these messages is generated for the second condition by setting the overlayunderflowtolerance Advanced Preference. Accepted values are:

• 0 — Arbortext Editor should indicate that a page number size does not precisely correspond to the final size of every page number in the document. This setting ensures the greatest formatting precision.

• 1 — Arbortext Editor should indicate that a page number is more than one character smaller than the space reserved for it. This is the default value.

• 2 — Arbortext Editor should indicate that a page number is more than two characters smaller than the space reserved for it.

• 3 — Arbortext Editor should indicate that a page number is more than three characters smaller than the space reserved for it.

• 4 — Arbortext Editor should indicate that a page number is more than four characters smaller than the space reserved for it.

Reformatting the document will resolve any outstanding page number spacing inconsistencies, but will eliminate any time savings.