RE: Newbie Word Question AND Of Myth and Reality

["Ed Manley" <edmanley -at- bellsouth -dot- net>]

It seems to me that this post ties the embedded vs. linked question back to
the single-sourcing discussions.

If you keep each object (chunk of text, graphic, whatever) as a separate
file and link them into the appropriate place in your doc. then you are in
fact single-sourcing, albeit unintentionally, are you not?

If so, you might consider broadening your question to include the basic
thought process behind doing what you are doing. If linking the graphic (or
other object) leads you to adopt single-source methods for creating
documents then embedded graphics may no longer seem attractive, as these are
almost mutually exclusive practices.

The question then might become: Am I and my peers interested in
single-sourcing? If so, there may be small role for embedded anything!

Have fun,
Ed


Evan Martin wrote:
>
> Is there any advantage of inserting the image as an object and linking to
> the file itself?  The only advantage that I've noticed is that you can
then
> double-click the image and edit it.

One advantage of linking is that you can update the images by updating the
source files.  If you're taking screen shots of early-stage software, for
example, linking is great--when the UI stabilizes, just replace the graphics
source files with updated versions; the next time you open the document,
you'll see the new images.

Another advantage is that you keep the Word (.doc) file smaller.  There are
those who believe that's really important.  :)

The disadvantage, of course, is that you have to track and maintain all the
graphics files along with the .doc file and template.  It's no worse than
publishing in HTML, though.

>
> I have been putting screenshots in by using Insert > Picture > From File.
> This seems to embed the image within the document and I don't need to
store
> the original image.  Is this common practice?

Hard to say.  It depends on who you ask.  For short and simple documents
with only a few small images, I usually just embed them.  For a document of
any size and complexity, I tend to link.  (I seldom use embed-with-link,
although I couldn't say why--I guess I just don't see the advantage of
both.)

By the way, you use the same command (Insert, Picture, From File), whichever
method you decide to use.

--David




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