QA wants unique edition number in changed footers

[Frank Stearns]

On Wed, 31 Jan 2007, Andersen, Verner Engell VEA wrote:

> All my FM book files contain all master pages, all variables, all 
> reference pages etc. This means that if you accidentially copy formats 
> from one file to anoter nothing will go wrong.
>
> My edition number in the footer is simply a global variable. Now the QA 
> Department wants each chapter to have an editon number according to when 
> changes were made. This means that some chapters have edition k, others 
> edition l and so forth.
>
> Have you any idea of how I can have the various edition numbers in 
> footer of each chapter page and still have the possibility of importing 
> all formats from all files without messing things up?

I routinely use what I call a "reference" or "resource" file. It's not 
part of the printed book, but other files cross-reference to this file for 
various bits of info, such as version info, part #, etc.

You could list your edition info for each chapter in such an external 
file, then in each chapter doc xref to this reference doc to pick up the 
appropriate info for the footer. If something changes, you simply make a 
content change in the ref doc and regen the book, rather than copying 
formats around.

Doesn't take too much to set it up, and I always had more confidence in 
this approach rather than copying vars around because as you noted above, 
it's easy to break something by copying formats.

Frank

Frank Stearns Associates | makers of IXgen(tm) for FrameMaker(r)
franks at fsatools.com <mailto:franks at fsatools.com>
TOLL FREE Voice (USA and Canada):  800-567-6421
USA Voice: 360-892-3970  USA FAX: 360-253-1498
http://www.fsatools.com