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Subject:Using Word for lengthy documents From:Noelle Conover <nconover -at- SGI -dot- NET> Date:Tue, 25 Feb 1997 22:41:02 -0500
Here we go again...another post about Word. I really did try to talk this client into
using FrameMaker for this project. I have designed a document that will be close to
300 pages by the time I am finished with this project. Its purpose is to document
API's that are used by two separate companies developing a software product together.
The documentation is structured in the style of a "manual" page, similar to a UNIX
manual style. In addition to running headers which use the STYLEREF feature of Word
7.0 to change the far right heading each time the API changes, I have used a page
numbering scheme which pulls in the Chapter number from a style called Heading 1 and
combines it with the page number of the section, for example "3-24." There are NO
graphics in this document at all. Each time I change something and switch to Page
View, it takes approximately 4-5 minutes to repaginate - on a Pentium 133 with 32 MB
memory!
I tried splitting this document into subdocuments in order to manage the growing
document more effectively, but I am faced with problems from Word saying that I have
too many subdocuments. (There are over 130 separate API's!)
Does anyone have extensive experience with the Master document feature of Word? I am
sure that many are using Word to manage lengthy documents. I really don't want to
treat each API as a separate document because I need to maintain chapter and page
numbers as well as generate a table of contents and index. Any advice would be
appreciated.
If only I could use FrameMaker...
--
Noelle Conover
=============================================================
Technical Writing / Software Training / Internet Consulting / Software Selection
email : nconover -at- sgi -dot- net
(412) 571-0259
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