Re: Multiple versions of same manual

[Scott Wahl <swahl -at- BRIDGEWATERSYS -dot- COM>]

I don't know about Word97, but FrameMaker allows the use of  'conditional
text'.  You create specific conditional text markers, apply the conditional
text markers as required, and then show or hide the conditional text depending
on what version of the document you want to produce.

Scott

hm chou wrote:

> setup: a product i am working on comes in three flavors -- Local,
> Networked, and Enhanced Networked. i wrote a manual for what has ended up
> being the Enhanced Networked product -- when i started there was only going
> to be 1 product, not 3. now that it's 3 separate but similar products, i'm
> being asked to create a separate Local manual and Network manual b/c we
> don't want the Local customers thinking they're getting a stripped down
> product. it's a fairly messy job, since many of the features intertwine
> throughout the three different products.
>
> question: is there a way to print the 3 manuals w/out actually having to
> write 3 separate manuals? i'm worried about updating the manuals since in
> many places they share the same information, and would then have to be
> updated 3 separate times (since i'm a contractor, the job of updating hte
> manuals will likely fall to someone else, either contract or permanent). is
> there a way to tag sentences and paragraphs as belonging to one manual and
> not another (like BUILDTAGS in WinHelp), and during printing, enable or
> disable these tags? and lastly, is there a way to do this in Word 97
> (blah!)?
> ************************
>  Fetchez la vache!
>
>  Hsuan-min Chou
>  hchou -at- interaccess -dot- com
> ************************
>