Re: Need book about Word longdoc techniques

[Andrew Plato <intrepid_es -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

"Michael Hoffman" wrote 

> Basically, how to force Word to behave more like FrameMaker, despite
itself.

Word is not Frame, and wanting it to be Frame will only frustrate you and
lead to irrational, emotional reactions of how Frame is perfect and Word
is crap. If you are stuck using Word, then use it like Word. Don't try to
make the tool be something else. 

Word works perfectly well for long documents, if you use Word like Word.
The two tools simply do not work the same way.  

Basic pointers:

- Don't use Master docs. Use one long doc. 
- Copy/Paste is your friend.
- Graphics should be dropped in as metafiles ONLY. No linking. Get a good
graphics tool (I recommend Paint Shop Pro) and use it to convert
everything. PSP is great because if you copy/paste out of PSP, you get
metafiles in Word. 
- Upgrade to Word 2000, SP2.
- Create styles and use them correctly. Just because Word makes it easier
to change things, doesn't mean you should. 
- Program macros to do common tasks.
- Learn how to use Word's extremely powerful data fields.
- If you have huge chunks of repetitive data - use Access and the
mail-merge functions to create database driven material. 
- Get a decent system, with a decent amount of memory. Get all the latest
updates too. 
- Wipe all the crap off your system. Get rid of all the dumb little memory
gobbling programs like Real Player, AOL, and cutesy weather notification
bots.  These things are usually coded by morons, leak memory like a sieve,
and are the root cause of many crashes. 

I've used Word for long documents (500 to 800 pages) and had few problems.
 Just don't try to make it be Frame. 

Good luck.

Andrew Plato

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