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Subject:RE: Word and single-sourcing From:"Chinell, David F (GE Indust, Security)" <David -dot- Chinell -at- GE -dot- com> To:"Wilhelm, Joel" <jwilhelm -at- athenati -dot- com>, <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Fri, 6 Jul 2007 09:08:35 -0400
Joel:
I think Word has some functions that can support single-sourcing. You
just have to be a little creative.
You need two things: variables and conditional text. You can easily
implement variables using Mail Merge. This lets you store multiple
values for as many variables as you need. If your conditional text
blocks are small, you can use Mail Merge for those, or you can use IF
fields that test the value of a Mail Merge or Document property you set.
For larger blocks of conditional text, you'll probably want to use a
manual or VBA-automated tagging and editioning approach. You can use
character styles or highlighting to tag conditional text. How you
establish a given condition and prepare that edition for publication is
up to you to determine (that's the manual vs. automated decision).
If you wanted to go a step farther, you might consider a first-attempt
at CMS using RoboHelp to warehouse individual topics that can get
assembled into different Help or print products. You'd still be using
Word as the publishing engine, and may need to do some post-Robo
processing to fine-tune the products to adjust them to the print medium
(cross-references, figure and table numbering, etc.).
We only have RoboHelp X4, but I think the latest version supports
conditional tagging of all components (TOC etc.) and supports variables.
We've actually explored and tested both approaches. For Word, we've
built VBA code to automate tagging and editioning conditional text (from
a single word to a whole topic, including tables and figures) using
character styles. We use document variables for variable fields (model
numbers and the like). We store the data in a Word table, one column per
edition, rather than one row as it is in Mail Merge.
We also use RoboHTML to create a single knowledge base of topics for a
given product. Text and topics are tagged as conditional text to produce
several different private label editions. There's a lot of manual
intervention required to adjust the HTML Help products as the TOC can't
be conditionalized. But, as I said, later versions have these features.
Create HTML or Microsoft Word content and convert to Help file formats or
printed documentation. Features include support for Windows Vista & 2007
Microsoft Office, team authoring, plus more. http://www.DocToHelp.com/TechwrlList
True single source, conditional content, PDF export, modular help.
Help & Manual is the most powerful authoring tool for technical
documentation. Boost your productivity! http://www.helpandmanual.com
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