Creating a Word template...

[Alan Litchfield]

Scott,


On 20/01/2007, at 6:58 AM, quills at airmail.net wrote:

> Alan,
>
> You mean to say that your powers that be don't differentiate  
> between content and format?
>
> That is crazy. Format has nothing to do with content. This is a  
> self-inflicted wound.
>

The fact of life is most people in this world aren't interested. I  
am, you are, they're not, and I have no interest in trying to  
convince them that they should be.

> Try to convince them that format can be standardized at publishing.  
> Content should be held sacrosanct bit could change to reflect the  
> proper formatting.
>

I have a contract to complete and need to satisfy the needs of my  
customer, who in turn gets content in Word files from a wide range of  
people. Some are computer savvy, most probably aren't and are likely  
see that it is a mark or personal success and achievement when they  
can change the shape of their bullet point.

To ease everyone's pain it is my and my client's desire to provide a  
template for these people that uses paragraph styles that are named  
the same as the ones in the FM template. That way they will not be  
able to create a whole section or chapter with various abnormal  
numbering styles... the classic was a, b, c, ... z, and then aa, bb,  
cc, instead of aa, ab, ac, ... not to mention bulleting styles,  
heading structures that match nothing else in 1600 other pages.  
However, since it has all been signed off by a judge there is no way  
to change it.

 From what I have seen, most style variations appear to have come  
from which ever law school they attended. But that is just an  
assumption.

On the other hand, I wonder if there is any point in doing that. I  
mean, naming paragraph styles and trying to enforce their use. I  
wonder if it may be better to structure the numbering, bulleting,  
etc. in Word and ignore, remove all the various other styles that are  
included.

When you get right down to it, I've been able to pare the styles down  
to about half a dozen distinct formats: headings, numbered lists,  
itemized lists, figure numbers, tabular content, footnotes. So  
perhaps I ought to be creating autonumbered, etc. styles in Word to  
match these.

Thanks Scott. You have changed my way of thinking. Perhaps not in the  
way you intended though :)

Alan
--
Alan T Litchfield, MBus (Hons), MNZCS
AlphaByte: PO Box 1941, Auckland, New Zealand
Publishing systems specialists
http://www.alphabyte.co.nz