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FrameMaker is made for this sort of situation. Combine it with Acrobat
and you can create PDFs of your documents which are then cross-
platform readable with the free Acrobat Reader.
Combine it with Mif2Go or WWP, and you can also generate help files,
HTML, etc. Repurposing your information this way will take planning,
though--see the archives for discussions of how to single-
source/repurpose information for multiple outputs.
On 7 Aug 2002 at 14:54, Cummings, Elizabeth wrote:
> the same time, and during this time, I am asked to update a certain
> paragraph that appears not only in every version the user's guide, but
> also many times in different sections of the same user's guide.
Text insets--you update the paragraph in one file and the text is
updated in all the files that have the inset (think referencing graphics
by name/location rather than copying them into the text). If you want to
get fancy, you can have all the paragraphs in one file but each in its
own flow, which will still let you inset the individual paragraphs but cuts
down on the number of files in your directories.
> Now, the request comes that I break down one version of a user's guide
> into user tailored user's guides. For example, a "Customer" has
> access to only X,Y, and Z functions of the system so does not need to
> know about the A through W that a "Supervisor" does. Therefore, I
> should make a Customer's Guide for every future version of the app,
> covering only X, Y, and Z-but also create a Supervisor's Guide for
> every future version of the app, covering only A through W.
Make each chapter a file, then use book files to mix and match
chapters based on need. A FrameMaker book simply says what files
are contained in a book and in what order. Using variables and
conditionals will let you customize even more.
HTH
Lin Sims
Of course I'm willing to take 'No' for an answer, so long as 'No' was the
answer I was looking for.
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