TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re: This old chestnut again From:Gary Schnabl <gSchnabl -at- LivernoisYards -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Sat, 17 Nov 2007 20:33:48 -0500
Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
> RE: This old chestnut again
>
> WilliamFLawrence wrote,
>
> > By the way, I'll echo what everyone else has said about master
> > documents: they don't work. What does work (not that your management
> > will allow it) is to use the master document feature in Open Office
> > Writer to create the books from your Word files.
>
> As much as I am an OpenOffice.org enthusiast, I must say that trying to use
> its master document feature to create books from *Word* files is very
> likely to have its own -- sometimes severe -- problems. Some Word features
> commonly used in techwriting just don't translate well into OpenOffice.org.
> Alas.
>
> --Jean
>
The kludge with OOo to allow cross referencing among subdocuments using
an OOo master document is a bit of a hassle. But, using FrameMaker
instead with its master document (book) function allows easy cross
references across subdocuments.
I often use OOo was a primary word processor for the individual
(sub)documents and afterwards convert them to DOC and then into
FrameMaker for building the book, either using convention (unstructured)
FrameMaker or into some XML version. Right now, I adapted the
non-normative DocBook 5 DTD (pretty much as is, but with a few necessary
modifications with a read/write rules file) with FrameMaker 7.0 for what
Adobe calls Structured FrameMaker--based, in my case, in XML.
Some caveats: OOo anchored frames may seem to convert OK from native ODF
to DOC, as viewed with MSO or OOo. But be advised that sometimes having
even one anchored frame in a FrameMaker-converted DOC file generated by
OOo may refuse to open in FrameMaker and actually hang up FrameMaker so
that it needs to be aborted and restarted. FrameMaker claims that FM 7.x
doesn't work with Windows Vista (mine is Ultimate). But FM 7.0 does work
OK except for a few OOo-generated functions and an occasional GUI
gremlin, associated with FrameMaker itself.
When I would extract the graphics out of the OOo-generated anchored DOC
frames, those graphics would work fine in anchored frames in FrameMaker.
Perhaps FM 8 used with Vista may not have these problems. But I can work
around them quite easily by just removing the anchored frames in OOo
before converting them to DOC and then using FrameMaker on them and
building either a conventional or a structured FM book.
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
---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-
