Importing by reference - tip

[Tom Johnson <johnsont -at- FREEWAY -dot- NET>]

At the risk of sounding like a "me too," I'd like to elaborate a bit on
what Bill Burns said regarding importing files by reference. The issue does
indeed relate to file management and has very little to do with space on a
hard drive. There are many cases where graphics are used in more than one
document. Many times it is advantageous to update a single instance of a
graphic rather than to update two (or two dozen). The company logo is a
perfect example. What happens when the corporate office decides to tweak
the logo. If you have one master logo, residing in a safe place, it is easy
to replace it and the job is done. Imagine trying to sort through every
document, maybe hundreds or thousands, to find where the logo may have been
copied into the document. Inevitably some instance will not be changed and
it will mysteriously be the one that is used as a template for a new
document. Surprise! Then you have to figure out which is the old and which
is the new. I've been down that road more times than I care to count.
Besides, I have better things to do than paste a revised graphic into every
occurence in every active document. One single change suits me just fine.

I suppose there are instance where copying graphics into documents is
useful. If you have no plans to reuse a document, it might make a lot of
sense. I'm sure there are other cases as well. It does make the files more
portable, but there are ways to work with linked files too.

In a related vein, when you have a document that references graphics from
scattered directories, handing the document off to a translator can be a
nightmare. Here is a trick for locating and consolidating the graphics.

Add a generated list (List of references) to your FrameMaker book file that
includes "Imported Graphics." Once you generate the list it will show you
the path to every imported graphic in the book. You can sort the list (in
Word) and use it as a checklist to hunt down and copy all the graphic files
into a common directory. From that point you can easily open the recently
moved FrameMaker files and, as someone mentioned, tell Frame to update the
document to use the new path to the graphics.

That's the digest version. If you have any questions, please contact me
off-list and I will answer any questions.

Tom Johnson
Traverse City, MI. Where the air and water are clean, but it gets really
cold in the winter.

business johnsont -at- starcutter -dot- com
personal thomasj -at- freeway -dot- net

On Thursday, August 27, 1998 5:33 PM, Elizabeth Kane
[SMTP:bkane -at- ARTISOFT -dot- COM] wrote:
>      Marilynne,
>      In the case of the graphics guy's stuff, he often used a single
>      imported-by-reference graphic in several different files, located in
>      different folders. So that added to my problems. If they were
already
>      in the folder where the main doc lives, there wouldn't be much of a
>      problem.
>
>      Apparently, even though he needed to use it in several docs, he
wanted
>      only one copy of each graphic residing on his machine, to save
space.
>      One example is a company logo. It's so small anyway, it could've
been
>      copied into the doc.
>
>      As I sort out this mess, I've been making multiple copies of the
same
>      imported-by-ref grpahics, placing each copy in a folder where a doc
>      that uses it resides. I think that accomplishes what you're talking
>      about, but I am taking up more hard drive space with this method.
>
>      Thanks,
>      Beth
>
>
> <snip>
> If you keep the graphics in a folder in the same folder as your document,
> then import by reference, it should be a fairly simple thing to keep
> graphics and documents together.
>
> Marilynne
>



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