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I'm a little confused over all the fretting and fussing over Word and Master
docs. First off, why are ANY of you using this feature? It doesn't work very
well. We all know that. Why aren't you just building the doc as one big
document? We have numerous 500+ page manuals we produce using Word. No
corruptions or nothing. They load fine and life is grand.
I think one of the problems people have with Word is that they try to use it
like Frame or PageMaker. Word is fundamentally a different product with
fundamentally different features. It was not built to be a desktop publishing
tool. Its a very "text-centric" product.
However that doesn't mean it can't handle big documents. Around my office, we
have no trouble with large docs in Word. However, we do use some basic common
sense when it comes to word. Such as:
- Don't link image files. Drop them in as native pictures from the clipboard.
Get a decent graphics program like Paint Shop Pro and copy images from there
into Word. Never use GIF, JPG, or BMP formats in Word. These will eat up a
gargantuan chunk of memory and space. Rather, keep all your images in one place
and copy them over from a graphics program as metafiles.
- Never use master docs. Do it all as one big flat document.
This feature doesn't work, we all know that.
- Upgrade to Office 2000 and get ALL the service packs. Word 97 was good, but
2000 fixes a lot of bugs from 97.
- Don't hand-format ANYTHING. Its tempting in Word because they make it so
easy.
- Use sections to break off portions of the documents.
- If you can't manage text from multiple writers using good-old copy/paste
technologies, you don't need a more expensive solution to do it for you.
There are lots of other things you can do, these are just the first that pop
into my mind.
My point is, don't try to apply the methods you use in Frame to Word. You will
undoubtly fail and then become emotionally attached to Frame.
Andrew Plato
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CALL FOR PAPERS OPEN UNTIL MARCH 15. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
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