Handling Large FrameMaker Books

[Combs, Richard]

Joseph wrote:
 
> I am working on a 650-page document in unstructured FrameMaker 8. Due
to
> the
> size of the document, its incredibly difficult for FrameMaker to
execute
> book-wide commands, such as performing an update or generating the
TOC.
> I have thought about splitting the document into two different books,
but I
> need one integrated TOC.
> 
> Does anyone have any suggestions that would make executing book-wide
> commands with a book this size easier?

What do you mean by "incredibly difficult" -- slow? How slow? What's
your computer configuration -- OS, processor, memory, disk space? Are
the files on a local disk or on the network?

There shouldn't be any problem with updating a 650-page book, other than
"oh, that took a couple of seconds longer than my 100-page book."

If you're experiencing much bigger problems, my first guess is you don't
have enough memory. Memory is dirt cheap these days, so if you have less
than 2 GB, upgrade to that level. 

Other possible problems involve the hard disk. Check your free disk
space, the amount of disk fragmentation, and the size of your swap
(paging) file. Also, delete all but the most recent few files from your
temp directory. 

Do you have lots of graphics that are embedded (instead of imported by
reference), or worse yet, OLE objects, either embedded or linked? OLE
can really bog things down (plus it can be unstable). 

Richard


Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
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rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
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