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Subject:Re: Word and FrameMaker From:powen -at- MAIL -dot- LMI -dot- ORG Date:Fri, 15 Sep 1995 13:08:24 EST
David Mitchell writes:
>Let me warn you, Master Documents in Microsoft Word will eat your
>documents (at least in version 6.0a and 6.0c for Windows). If you
>want more info, mail me back.
I've also had problems with the master document feature in Word, although I'm a
diehard fan of the software in general and often use it to create long, complex
documents. This is the one feature that I think WordImperfect does better than
Word - to give them more credit, WP came up with it first. I'd like to know if
others of you have "mastered" the master documents in Word or are experiencing
similar problems. I'm especially confused about the way word "locks" and
"unlocks" the subdocuments. Of course, I haven't RTFM (read the f***ing manual)
yet on this topic, so maybe this is a "duh" problem. Any thoughts?
David also says:
> Frame also has conditional text, which is implemented fairly well.
> We used it to create multiple manuals based off a single core. Well, at least
> we produced a design and it worked in theory. In practice, we started
> using conditional text, then copied the entire document to a new file and
> edited from there. So there was a shared original source, in a sense.
I'm not familiar with FrameMaker, but I just wanted to say that Word has a
similar boilerplate feature that has always worked well for me. Using
"bookmarks" you can insert a tag that "points" to a shared, boilerplate file
containing info that you change frequently. When you update fields in Word, the
bookmarked text in the Word file is replaced with the text in the boilerplate
file. I haven't used this feature in a while (not since Word 2.0), but I assume
it still works as well as it did.
Pam Owen
Nighthawk Communications
Reston, VA
Nighthawk1 -at- aol -dot- com, or powen -at- lim -dot- org
