Writing a cohesive document for print and on-line using MS Publis her?

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

X reports: <<I'm still putting together a 50 plus page annual
Cancer report that will be used for both hard copy print and an on-line PDF
on the Intranet. I have 11 different authors so far. Some have used Word
'97, others 2000, some Excel '97, others 2000. One sent a Word Perfect file.
I'm still waiting for three more files. Need I say more?>>

<g> Nope. But the problems that ensue aren't really all that difficult to
solve (just time consuming) if you're going to be the one who puts together
the final document. All you need to do is pick your software (e.g., Word
2000), define a template that contains all the necessary style names, import
the many documents into a document based on that template, then use search
and replace to replace all the former styles with the styles in your
template. (In the Word search and replace dialog box, you'll have to click
the "More" button at the bottom to reveal the advanced options that let you
replace style names.)

When you're done, you'll still have to scan through the document to find
instances that got missed by this process; for example, Word supports both
paragraph styles (which apply to an entire paragraph) and character styles
(which apply only to a subset of a paragraph), and assumes (with some logic)
that if you've gone to the trouble to apply a character style, then you
don't want to change this. So it doesn't override the character style,
unless you redefine the character style and apply those formatting changes.
Incidentally, this is why you can't just do a "select all" and apply the
Normal or Body text styles.

<<My quest is to try to get them all from Word "whatever" into a cohesive
Publisher format  without losing my mind.>>

I haven't used Publisher, but PageMaker supports search and replace for
styles, so presumably Publisher can do something similar. If not, compile
all the text beforehand in Word and do the reformatting there. When you're
done, send the text to Publisher.

<<Doesn't copy well into Publisher as an entity.>>

In general, you should avoid copying text into desktop publishing software;
most DTP software has an "import" function (in PageMaker, it's called
"Place", oddly enough), and this does a far better job of bringing across
style names and other formatting. Saves you tons of work compared with copy
and paste, and greatly reduces the risk of losing text or misapplying style
names.

<<Where the report is going to be a PDF and a printed document I would
appreciate any input as to which fonts would work well in either formats in
ONE document.>>

If you use templates, then you can very easily create online and print
versions using different sets of fonts: one optimized for print, and one for
online viewing. All you need to do is save a temporary copy of the print
version of the file and apply a new template (one that uses your online
style definitions) before producing the PDF. Make all subsequent edits in
the print version of the file, and when you're ready to redo the PDF file to
account for these edits, simply save another temporary copy and reapply the
online template. Of course, you'll still have to think through the
formatting of the two files, since page breaks in the print version don't
apply to the onscreen version (there are no "pages" onscreen, only
scrollable windows).

--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
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