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Subject:Linking vs. embedding graphics in Word From:Christopher Knight <knight -at- ADA -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 7 Aug 1997 16:25:01 PDT
The advantage is smaller document (i.e. principal text) files. It doesn't
matter what the graphic is, although the larger the more important, and
screen-shot bitmap files are typically very large. By linking bitmaps, I
don't have to reduce resolution or convert color bitmaps into gray-scale,
just to keep the file size low.
The advantages of smaller document files are:
(1) Word gets increasingly erratic as file size increases. Always has,
always will. There are clearly design flaws in either the program logic,
or the file format definition, or both.
(2) The smaller the doc file, the quicker loading, saving, and searching
it becomes.
One other advantage of linking is modularity. I often want to use a
graphic in more than one document. Keeping it in a separate file makes
that easy, although you do have to master the path issue.
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