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Subject:Re: Developing 150-page docs in MS Word XP From:Solveig Haugland <solveig -at- techwriterstuff -dot- com> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 19 Feb 2004 10:13:55 -0700
Hi all,
"Guy K. Haas" wrote:
> OK -- we hear testimony that Word (with enough memory) CAN handle a
> 150-page document. I have been using Framemaker (5.6, if anyone cares)
> for 500-page documents. Does OpenOffice/StarOffice offer Master Docs?
> If so, does it work THERE?
OpenOffice.org is compressed XML so the file sizes are about as small as it gets. (OpenOffice.org is the free Microsoft Office-compatible office suite.) I
just created a 1000-page Writer file (the Word equivalent) in OpenOffice.org with styles, tables, bullets, inserted linked spreadsheets, and linked graphics.
File size: 249k. And of course it opened up again without crashing. I've got an 800 mhz machine with 256 MB RAM.
Having the memory to handle a large file isn't an issue in OpenOffice.org because you have to work realllllly hard to get any file over a MB. (Well, you have
to insert rather than linking to the graphics. But that's just a good idea, linking.)
OpenOffice.org and StarOffice also have a master document feature that I like better than Word's. Given the file size of Writer documents, you might or might
not need to use the master docs, depending on what you're creating.