[Framers] Fwd: Managing Versions of documentation simultaneously

[Carol J. Elkins]

At 11:52 PM 5/1/2018, Caroline Tabach wrote:
>I have been asked what SW writing tool can manage versions. At first 
>I thought "version control" like you have in Software, but I found 
>they meant maintaining multiple versions of the User guides at the 
>same time. For instance, even when SW version 4 is released we will 
>still have to update and maintain SW version 3, as features are 
>added and developed. Some things in these versions are totally 
>different, and some are the same and need to be updated in the same 
>way in both guides


I house multiple versions of a document in a Framemaker folder and 
build the version number into the filename. However, I personally do 
not single-source the content of these files.

You might consider making one of the versions the "source" file and 
then create the content of the other versions by using individual 
cross-references to paragraphs in the source file. That keeps the 
single-sourced content current with the "source" file and allows you 
to create non-cross-referenced paragraphs for unique content.

This approach will not work well if you have a lot of 
cross-references in your source file's paragraphs, because 
cross-references within text insets are problematic. But I believe 
you can build a workaround for this using an Extendscript. But I have 
no experience with that.

Carol