Merging books: Need FM mechanisms and methodologies for merging books with large fraction of identical material

[Art Campbell]

Avraham,

Question 2:
I handle this pretty routinely, and I do it by creating a directory
for each document set. Under that I have a subdirectory for \Graphics,
\Shared, and \Book -- obviously there are several \Book directories
with different names, but the graphics and shared content are used by
the document set so they're at the top level.

Each FM file in \Shared is used in two or more component files. Some
are entire stand-alone files -- Copyright info, or the Glossary, and
things like that. But most are topics that are imported into a parent
file by reference. One place you may trip up is including heading
information in the files, because some books will reuse the same core
of information but use different head structures -- it may be under
and H1 in some books, and an H2 or something else in another. So when
possible, I try just to include text, tables and non-hierarchal
content.

Question 1:
There's no automatic way to do this. Copy and paste, and analyze.

Question 3:
No idea. I'd guesstimate a day per book for conversion, but that's a
WAG. Could easily be half that or twice that, depending on how the
books are set up and how fast you are.


Art Campbell
               art.campbell at gmail.com
  "... In my opinion, there's nothing in this world beats a '52
Vincent and a redheaded girl." -- Richard Thompson
                                                      No disclaimers apply.
                                                               DoD 358



On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 3:23 PM, Avraham Makeler <amakeler at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>  RE: Merging books
>
> The situation:
>
> I have a client who has a large number of FM (7.2/8) books. From amongst
> these books, there are two particular sets of books, as follows:
>
> Set #1. Two books having about 50 - 60% identical content  (each book is
> ~100 pages)
>
> Set #2. Four books having about 10% identical content  (each book is ~80-100
> pages)
>
> (No particular connection between the two sets of books; just presenting the
> situation.)
>
> Now, the client would like to merge each of these two sets of books so that
> each set combines the identical material. E.g., for set #1 above, either the
> two books should be combined and the text partitioned by conditional text
> controls, or maybe the two books should be kept separate but the identical
> part should be maintained in some sort of outside, third, common component
> or "book" (or whatever such a thing would be called), and then when you have
> to publish one of the two books, you would be able to include in "on the
> fly" the common, identical component.
>
> Same for set #2.
>
>
> Questions:
>
> 1. What mechanisms does FM provide for constructing merged solutions for
> each of these two sets of books?
> 2. Which mechanism and methodology are recommended for each of the two sets
> of books?
> 3. How long should I estimate it would take me to perform merges for each of
> the two sets of books?
>
> TIA
>
> - avi
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