[Framers] Pros/Cons: Separate file per chapter, or one REALLY BIG FILE for an entire book

[louisek at mchsi.com]

Hi Lin,

FWIW, I vote for separate chapter files too. I prefer the generated TOC and Index book files, instead of generating standalone files and pasting them in manually.

Louise

 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lin Sims" <ljsims.ml at gmail.com>
To: "Ken Poshedly" <poshedly at bellsouth.net>, "Steve Rickaby" <srickaby at wordmongers.demon.co.uk>, "Rick Quatro" <rick at rickquatro.com>
Cc: "Frame Users" <framers at lists.frameusers.com>
Sent: Monday, November 7, 2016 1:13:31 PM
Subject: Re: [Framers] Pros/Cons: Separate file per chapter, or one REALLY BIG FILE for an entire book

<laughing> I think I touched a nerve.

Yeah, my personal inclination is one chapter per file, unless we're talking
a really short document of less than 20 pages. Nice to know that I'm not
alone; however, I'm really looking for reasons why using a chapter per file
is better than using one file for an entire book (or vice-versa, I know
there are people out there who do it that way).

Manageability and stability are both good points, especially since Frame
has become somewhat less stable since Adobe took it over (still far, far
better than Word). And fighting the design model is also an excellent point.

(And, Ken, even though I'm not working in DITA, I do try to organize my
documents in a structured fashion. Consistency of language and order of
information presentation go a long way towards that.)

On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 2:02 PM, Ken Poshedly <poshedly at bellsouth.net> wrote:

> Lin,
>
> We also use unstructured FM11.0 to produce files that are distilled down
> to pdf files for hard copy printing (and maybe distribution on CD, but not
> so much).
>
> As such, we compile separate chapter files then assemble them into a final
> book in FM.
>
> Much more manageable that way (at least for us). A former so-called tech
> writer here (who wound up being our not-so-loved manager before finally
> being let go) forced FM to do what he wanted it to do, with humongous files
> resulting that crashed and burned at least half the time. A normal chapter
> file might be 3 or 4 mb, but his sometimes got into the gigabyte range.
> Didn't care, didn't change, and caused the rest of us lots of problems when
> trying to open his files or even p-a-g-e through them (it took maybe an
> hour to work one's way through a 50 or 60-page file). We're now much better
> off, referencing and not embedding our graphics. Hint: take any photo
> produced with a digital camera from its 60 x 60 inch (or whatever) original
> size and resample it down to maybe 8 x 10 and oh, how life in tech
> pubs-land is so much better.
>
> So in the end, don't do the whole book as one file. Use chapters as
> separate files (even with all the stuff you mentioned), then combine them
> into one book afterwards.
>
> And yes, while the rest of the world goes on to DITA, etc, we continue to
> "bring up the rear".
>
> -- Ken in Atlanta
>
>
> On Monday, November 7, 2016 1:46 PM, Lin Sims <ljsims.ml at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Pretty much what it says in the title. I'm guessing there have been
> discussions about this in the past, and I plan to look for those, but I
> thought I'd toss this out there anyway.
>
> We're talking chapters that can run a couple hundred (or more) pages loaded
> with tables, graphics, and conditional text so that they can be used to
> single-source multiple documents (no, don't talk to me about DITA, my
> non-tech-writing boss wants it in unstructured).
>
> --
> Lin Sims
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-- 
Lin Sims
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