Re: New TECHWR-L Poll Question - Word Doc Sizes

[Al Geist <al -dot- geist -at- geistassociates -dot- com>]

Like others, I have worked on Word documents shorter than 10 pages that 
gave me fits and longer than 100 pages that worked smoothly.  I can say 
the same about WordPerfect documents, although they seemed to have fewer 
problems overall.  I've also worked on Pagemaker documents that were 16 
pages and crashed on a regular basis and PageMaker documents over 250 
pages long that worked like a charm.  In most cashes, the instability 
was caused by a plethora  of personal styles imported by a multitude of 
developers without someone designated as the controller.

Personally, I believe that as much as we'd like to bash Microsoft, the 
problem with stability is directly related to how the document was 
originally created.  If you have a dozen developers, each using their 
own personal styles, feeding one document, you have problems  If you 
have one person who is relatively skilled with Word collecting the 
information from the 12 developers and merging that information into one 
document, regardless of the program (Word, WordPerfect, PageMaker, 
InDesign, etc.) then you will probably have far fewer problems.

Then again, my view is tainted right now as I am finishing cleaning up a 
200 page Word document created by six developers in three weeks and 
pawned off as a "technical manual."  Had to do the old copy-and-paste 
method (the Maggie method) to get rid of the instability...even cleaning 
up the styles wouldn't help.

--

Al Geist, Geist Associates
Technical Writing, Online Help, Marketing Collateral, Web Design, Award 
Winning Videos, Professional Photography
Office: 802-658-3140

Cell: 505-400-4128
E-mail: al -dot- geist -at- geistassociates -dot- com <mailto:al -dot- geist -at- geistassociates -dot- com>
URL: www.geistassociates.com <http://www.geistassociates.com> (online 
portfolio/resume)

See also:
URL: www.geistimages.com <http://www.geistimages.com> (fine art prints 
for home or office and note cards for all occasions)

"When the situation is absolutely hopeless, you have nothing to worry 
about."
                        Compliments of The Monkey Wrench Gang


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