Flow text to every other page in bilingual document

[NisusUser]

I'm wondering how best to flow text in a bilingual document. My intention is to have Language A on the left side of every spread and Language B on the right side of every spread. I guess the only way to flow text to every other page is going to be to use text boxes, right? What do I lose by doing that? Are there certain features / actions that won't work inside text boxes? E.g., what about tables inside of text boxes? Seems to work, but anything to be aware of with them? It looks as if the worst thing is that I can't put a footnote inside of a text box, nor can I put a footnote into a table (best I can tell).

Worse case scenario, I could use InDesign, but I'd rather stick with NWP 2.0.7. Another option would be to make two totally separate documents, print them to PDF and then interleave the pages to get the desired effect. I'm not too sure about page numbers in that case. Maybe the best way to number pages in any case would be "A-1" for the first page of Languaga A, and "B-1" for the first page of the Language B text.

[Groucho]

Hello, NisusUser

I don’t think NWP is the best application to do this. InDesign is surely better as you can set a master page for right pages and another for left ones. I have used text boxes, but not so extensively. I think it’ll take some doing to paginate a book, if that’s what you mean to do.

Best regards,
Henry.

[NisusUser]

Thank you, Henry, for your input!

[rfwilmut]

Another option would be to make two totally separate documents, print them to PDF and then interleave the pages to get the desired effect. I'm not too sure about page numbers in that case. Maybe the best way to number pages in any case would be "A-1" for the first page of Languaga A, and "B-1" for the first page of the Language B text.

Don't interleave. Create two documents as described. Print the first one single sided. Turn the stack over and print the other single sided in reverse (assuming your printer will do this, otherwise you will have to rearrange the pages first). Neither document should have page numbers. You will need a header page in document B but not in A so that the pages appear opposite.

When done, create a new document with page numbers. Make each page blank and with the 'new page' code until you have enough pages. Then overprint the existing pages double-sided.