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Subject:RE: PDF a "book" of Word files From:Jean Hollis Weber <jean -at- jeanweber -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Sun, 05 Oct 2003 14:59:59 +1000
Yes, I've found that Master Docs in OpenOffice.org, while they work, are a
PITA to set up and have some hidden gotchas. I wrote a detailed "how to" in
my book on OOoWriter, but _I_ certainly wouldn't want to try to get a bunch
of developers to follow my instructions.
I'm as keen as Bruce about using OOo, but I don't think it's quite up to
the demands of many technical communicators. Some of the more complex
things we do, using fields for example, work, but not easily. Even a simple
cross-reference to a heading requires an extra step to define the target
(similar to defining a bookmark). OTOH, conditional text is easy to do (in
contrast to Word), though not as robust as in FrameMaker.
But the program is improving rapidly, and version 1.1 was just released a
few days ago.
Jean
John Posada wrote:
>Also, I tried it late yesterday afternoon. It's not intuitive, which is what
>I need for the developers.
>
>And yes, I need bookmarks and links.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Jean Hollis Weber [mailto:jean -at- jeanweber -dot- com]
>Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 3:07 AM
>
>Bruce Byfield suggests to John Posada,
> >I know that I'm going to sound as if I'm evangelizing, and maybe I am,
> >a little. However, you might want to see how the word files look in
> >OpenOffice.org.
> >
> >Assuming that there are no formatting problems (and there may very well
> >be), you can safely use the master document feature in OOo, and export
> >directly to PDF without using another program.
>
>One major flaw in that idea, Bruce: PDFs created from OpenOffice.org,
>either using its inbuilt export-as-PDF function, or printing to a
>PostScript file and distilling using Acrobat, do NOT have bookmarks or
>working internal links. Not a problem if the PDF is intended only for
>printing, but John specifically mentioned bookmarks.
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