Is there an easy way to manage graphics shared in many FM files?

[Rene Stephenson]

We do have the Archive plugin (LOVE IT) and use it for creating a zip file that we put into our version control and release system. The one beef I have with it is that whatever date you do the archive becomes the date for all the files in the archived folder, so if I have several books with graphic files by the same name, I can't tell which one is truly the latest file after I use Archive.

I think you lost me a little, though. I  know Archive solves the path problems when it creates the archive folder containing all the files necessary to reproduce the project, but in my mind I'm thinking when I have several books that already share graphics, running this plugin would create additional copies of those graphics rather than creating fewer... What am I missing?

Rene
 



----- Original Message ----
From: "Pinkham, Jim" <Jim.Pinkham at voith.com>
To: Rene Stephenson <rinnie1 at yahoo.com>; framers at lists.frameusers.com
Sent: Wednesday, March 5, 2008 4:07:09 PM
Subject: RE: Is there an easy way to manage graphics shared in many FM files?

This at least slightly tangential to your question, Rene, but I've found
the Archive plug-in a wonderful tool in pulling graphics and insets in a
book that are scattered hither and yon on the network into a single
folder tied to that book. From there, you can move, copy, or reuse the
graphics in a place or places where you want them to be going forward. 

-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Rene
Stephenson
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 1:08 PM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: OT: Is there an easy way to manage graphics shared in many FM
files?

Hi All,

We have a library of a few dozen books (about 10,000 pages), and many of
the files use the same graphics or composites built from shared
graphics. We've run upon a challenge, though, in that things have gotten
complex enough that we can't always use subfolders to group the graphics
in a logical way so that we know where to look to find them. To
complicate matters, we have recently endured several rounds of layoffs
that have rather drastically diminished our team to just me and a
trainer and our boss. :-\  The graphic artist was the last of our
casualties.

I am now discovering how much our artist was keeping in his head. Now, I
know the idea of cataloging or browsing graphics is really probably out
of scope for any desktop publishing application, but when you're dealing
with graphic-intensive books in FM, with so much content to manage...!
We have single-sourced about 75% of the projects, so the text part of
the FM files is in manageable condition, thanks to insets, shared files,
conditional text, variables, and the like. But the graphics...! Egads!
We really need to simplify and find a way to quickly locate and identify
the graphics files!

I'm wondering whether we could use the source graphics rather than the
output files. The source files include CDR, AI, DWG, DXF, and VSD files.
All of those were being output to TIFF or JPG for use in FM. I have
heard that FM is supposed to import CDR files, but using FM 7.2 I
haven't had very good luck (possibly my mistakes).

I'm also thinking about file structure in that right now, we have the
books grouped by product and the output graphics in the product
directories at the same "tree" or path level as the FM files folder for
the product. Aren't there some limitations about how long the path can
be or how many folders up and down the path between the container doc
and the graphic you're inserting that can impact FM ability to display
the images? It seems like about 5 of the ..\..\..\ things in the
referenced file path causes an issue...?

And the other thing that's brewing in my mind is, surely there's some
program somewhere that catalogs graphics of various file formats when
you provide a path or group of paths for a repository...??

Given the tech market and economic rollercoaster of the last few years,
I know I'm not the only writer to find myself in this position. Any
insight that any of you can provide would be greatly appreciated!
 
Rene L. Stephenson




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