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Subject:RE: Suggestions for new tool options From:"Glenn Maxey" <glenn -dot- maxey -at- voyanttech -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 4 Jun 2001 12:50:37 -0600
Hi Kristin,
Sorry about the misunderstandings caused by Sean/Andrew. FWIW, whereas
Andrew Plato's postings might sometimes be highly opinionated and
borderline rants, they are always informative and backed by scars of
experience. I value his contributions to the list highly.
Of the advice he gave you, I only really take issue with "no linking
graphics" and his recommendation to paste the image into the document.
Although not trouble free, I found linking images to be a highly
reliable way to keep my documents small and to reduce re-work. Whenever
the product's GUI changes, all I have to do is find the outdate image
and replace with the new image. (With graphic image naming conventions,
finding the image isn't usually that bad.) I often just overwrite it.
Then, *vola* my document is up-to-date. I don't have to search out
**every** occurrence of that image in my document and manually re-embed
it. (Yes, if I can re-use an image, I will. The reader's won't care
about the duplication if the image is relevant.)
Because I link the images, I often just leave them as BMPs on my
hard-disk. BMPs are used in WinHelp as is, so I don't bother converting
them. If I were creating HTML Help or some other HTML system, I would
consider having JPG or GIF linked in as the source.
With PaintShop Pro's new PSP format, a lot more credance is given to
leaving images in this format and then using the built-in batch
conversion to get them into whatever format you need.
I have only two problems with linked images.
[1] Word always stores the full-path by default. The path is rarely
relevant when the document is given to someone else. This is
particularly true if the images are on a network drive. Hence, I usually
manually change the image link to be relative paths. (You can see the
path by activating field codes. After changing a path, Word still isn't
smart enough to use it until you F9 the field codes to update it with
Word. I sometimes don't do the path changes until late in the cycle,
because I can record a quick macro to handle it all at once.)
[2] Relative paths cause another problem, particularly when I open
documents in "unusual" manners. Microsoft products use what I call "the
file-open pointer." This is the directory that is pointed to when you do
a file open, file save, or file save-as. When you open a file by using
the most recently visited documents (in the File menu) or by dragging a
file into Word, it does not always update the file-open pointer. The
negative side-effect is that the file-open pointer is not in the proper
directory to resolve the relative paths to the images. You end up doing
a "file-open" to navigate to the correct starting directory (and then
canceling before actually opening a document) in order to get the images
to display. In past versions of Word, this has led to other problems
whenever I tried to view two documents from different directories and
different relative paths to their images.
Andrew's comment about the bullet-proof template hold a lot of water.
Problems with documents can usually be tracked to styles and the
inappropriate use thereof. When used properly, even bulleted/numbered
lists can work. It is worth it to have a good template from the
beginning.
Glenn Maxey
Voyant Technologies, Inc.
Tel. +1 303.223.5164
Fax. +1 303.223.5275
glenn -dot- maxey -at- voyanttech -dot- com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Field, Kristin [mailto:KField -at- LSAC -dot- org]
> Sent: Monday, June 04, 2001 10:28 AM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: RE: Suggestions for new tool options
> 5. No linking graphics. All graphics should be placed in-line
> as metafiles. Open them in PSP, copy the portion of the
> graphic you want to the clipboard, then paste the image (IN-LINE!!!)
into the
> document. Don't put the images into frames or floating things. These
just create
> problems. Word loves metafiles. It can eat them very nicely. It
loathes
> linked images and it really hates GIF and JPG images. >
> 7. Build a bullet-proof template. Word's templates are actually quite
> powerful - once you learn the quirks. Build a template that has
> adequate styles to handle all your text. >
> I don't believe such a thing exists in Word. Unless you mean
> bullet-less because it sure can have a lot of problems with them.
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