Page Layout Settings and Headers/Footers in EA Virtual Documents

When trying to generate a document using the virtual document generation facility in Enterprise Architect, I’ve been struggling to get the formatting to match the template for my client.

It appears when generating the virtual document, the page setup/layout parameters (i.e. margins) are derived not from the first template used in the virtual document, as I would have assumed, but from the last!

Clearly, unless you apply section breaks to the templates, each template called overwrites certain parameters (including the margins) for the overall document.

While I can understand why this might be the case, it does seem much more intuitive that these details would come from the first template in any section, rather than the last, since you would usually have a fairly specific first template for any particular document type.

I also note that the same is true for headers and footers. If you have headers and footers in a cover sheet, as they are in a separate section in the created document, the headers and footers are retained, and propagate to the whole document (assuming you don’t have other headers and footers defined).

However, if the header and footers are in the in a standard document template etc., they are overwritten by the last template in the virtual document, even if there is no header/footer defined in that there not being any header/footer defined.

 

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