Text insets: to be or not to be?

[Scott Prentice]

Text insets work fine in Structured Frame (but not so well if you're 
going to XML). If you are staying in Structured FM files, you might want 
to look into using InsetPlus from West Street Consulting 
(http://weststreetconsulting.com/WSC_InsetPlus.htm). This lets you do 
"insets" at the element level rather than the standard restriction of 
insets at the file level. (This works very much like the "conref" 
mechanism in DITA.) Also .. the plugin is free!

...scott

Scott Prentice
Leximation, Inc.
www.leximation.com
+1.415.485.1892



Rene Stephenson wrote:
> Carla,
>
> Thanks for your detailed insight! We're looking at a move to structured FM when the product line stabilizes. Should I be inferring from your statement that text insets don't play well in Structured FM? (Excuse me if my ignorance is showing...)
>
> Most (if not all) of the other places that we use text insets, we've kept the file to the smallest chunk possible and tried to avoid using anything above the body text level of formatting. But, a few of the text insets are used in over a dozen different places. Working around those as topical files at the book level could become a very involved slice-and-dice operation. Is that what's really necessary in all instances of text insets toward structure, or would using topical setup only for the chunks that are heavily condition tagged suffice?
>
> Thanks
> Rene
>
> "Martinek, Carla" <CMartinek at zebra.com> wrote:We create a intro page (FrontPage) for each chapter, and then link in
> the topical files behind it. It works for us. (...)
>
> We set this up with the expectation that we will be moving to structured
> content (XML/DITA), and topical is the way to go for that.  Also, once
> we move the topical content to XML, our Tech Support Help Desk will
> easily be able to grab and reuse the content for their needs.
>
> -Carla
>  
>
>
>
>