Master page mapping & two-level running headers

Question

Using running headers for two or more levels is probably an age-old problem both in Framemaker and Word. I wonder if anyone has a solution that works with master page mapping.
To elaborate a bit, I have a number of documents with a typical chapter structure like this:
1
1.1
1.2
1.3
2
3
4
4.1
4.2
When I use a running header that references both first-level (H1) and second-level headings (H2), the previous second-level heading is carried over to the next first-level section. For example, H2 from section 1.3 is carried over to the running header of sections 2 and 3, as there is no new H2.
The obvious solution is to apply a different master page to sections that have no second-level heading.
However, I failed to find master page mapping rules that would give me the intended result: When I use a master page mapping rule for H1 paratags ("use a master page with a running header for H1 only, until changed"), it doesn't consider if there is a H2 paratag on the same page. In conjunction with a mapping rule for H2 paratags, the second-level running header would start at the second subsection of every first-level section, i.e. 1.2 or 4.2, leaving 1.1 and 4.1 with a different header (which is a trade-off, but not too nice).
Do you know of any solution or workaround (preferably without using FrameScript)?
Thanks in advance for any helpful comments.
Johannes
(This is for unstructured documents in FM 8.0p277 on Windows.)

Answer 1

JohannesKrueger wrote:
Good news, I think found a workaround myself. (The solution is similar to what I did in Word.)
My "magic" building block for the second-level running header is
<$paratext[+,H2,#EmptyPara]>
The "+" argument tells FrameMaker to look for the specified paratags from the bottom of the page upwards. If there is no H2, it displays the content of #EmptyPara instead. Now one only has to make sure that there is an empty paragraph with paratag #EmptyPara after the heading of every first-level section that has no subsections.
If you like to share your solution, I'd still be interested.
Johannes
Hi, Johannes:
I haven't used Word in ages, so I wasn't aware it had become this smart!
Your solution is good use of existing FrameMaker capability. I don't have any better solution to contribute.
If the blank paragraphs cause inter-paragraph spacing problems, you might want to create a new paragraph format, "H2_NoSub," for headings that have no subsections, and make it a run-in, so that it pulls the #EmptyPara onto its own line, hence, there's no effect on text flow.
Yes, you'd need to adjust running header definitions, and TOC included paragraph definitions to deal with the new paragraph format. Just a suggestion.
HTH
Regards,
Peter
Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices