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>>We have a style guide and a template. Our manager, who is the manager of
Customer Service and Support, becomes
>>unhappy when we depart from the template. I created the template. It is
mostly for end user documentation, and I
>>always envisioned it as the "core" from which individual documents might
vary to some degree, depending on the
>>needs of the writer. With some variation allowed, documents would still
have the same "look and feel" if the
>> writer adhered to the fonts and so forth.
>>Is it usual to consider a template the only way to create documents of the
same type, allowing the documentor no
>>freedom depending on the individual document?
I think it's becoming clear that the your original concept of the document
seems to be more book- and writer-centric than perhaps the manager's was.
If the materials are going to be "re-purposed" (amazing how our day's topics
have coalesced) it is likely that there will be a lot of macros that change
fonts and spacing to make the material reusable.
Real simple example: Say that a writer writes a document, adjusting the
predefined spacing by adding 2 points between lines. Then a sales manager
wants to take a section of that document and put it into a PowerPoint slide
show -- something he has done before. But, because of the custom spacing,
he has to change his formatting to take out the extra spacing. He is going
to complain to your manager that "you guys are changing your templates."
This is an overly-simple explanation -- where you are going to have problems
is when the books are put into help files, or onto web applications.
Shops where information is re-used in lots of outputs are real
template-Nazis for this reason.
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