Re: An organizational conundrum

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

You can place the common chapters in a controlled
location and sync them to local working folders using
a versioning program such as CVS.  Your biger 
problem is that Word is not sufficiently robust for
multiple people to reliably assemble large documents 
this way.  I've been able to make schemes like this
work acceptably with Word when working alone, but
it requires following a rigidly consistent process that
usually falls apart the moment a second set of hands 
starts working on it.

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Holly Steele" <hsteele1 -at- gmail -dot- com>
> My concern is that with all these copies around someone will make changes to
> a copy and those changes will not get transferred to the QB document that
> lives in the common folder.
> 
> I could use read-only files in the different user guide folders. That would
> solve the problem of people changing the wrong version, but I would have a
> bigger problem: if a change was made to QB (in the Common folder), that
> document would have to be copied to all the manuals that use that chapter (I
> am not sure how many use that chapter...but I think at least 5, possibly
> more).
> 
> They want single-sourcing so this kind of mess doesn't happen. But, putting
> the chapters together with INCLUDETEXT doesn't seem to work either.
> 
> I would love to be able to do this project in a system that would suit my
> needs better (like FrameMaker). However, the company wants everything in
> Word and on-line help.
> 
> So, if you are up for a puzzle, I would love to hear your suggestions.

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