[Framers] Advice on slimming down a guide; customized guides per customer??

[Lin Sims]

Hi Caroline,

I've only played with groups a folders a little, so there's not much I can
tell you. I can say that using a folder will change how your headings are
numbered, but using a group won't.

On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 1:25 AM Caroline Tabach <caroline.tabach at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Lin
> thanks  for getting back to me.
>
> Are there people with experience with groups?
>
> I will look up those numbering articles and think about either this
> suggestion, or the suggestion of using conditional text.
>
> I have to present the ideas to the SMEs next week
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 2:34 PM Lin Sims <ljsims.ml at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > My apologies if this response is late; I've been on vacation.
> >
> > Assuming I understand the situation you are describing, I think your best
> > choice is number 2. There are a number of good guides that describe how
> to
> > use FrameMaker's numbering blocks to set up some pretty complicated
> > numbering schemes without too much difficulty (I'd recommend the ones by
> > Lester Smalley and Dan Emory and I can probably dig those up for you if
> you
> > can't find them on the web), and once those are set up all you have to do
> > is regenerate the book when you go to publish, which you'd have to do
> > anyway for the Table of Contents.
> >
> > You might also want to look into using Groups, which I believe will let
> you
> > use individual files (your boxes) as sections of a chapter (your
> families)
> > without having to mess too much with the numbering scheme. I haven't used
> > Groups, though, so I can't provide too much advice on that. The only
> caveat
> > here is that each box will start on a new page, because that's how
> > FrameMaker handles files collected into a book.
> >
> > I do not think text insets is a good choice here, since you would have to
> > relink the text insets every time you create a book depending on what's
> > used for a particular customer and that could get both tedious and error
> > prone depending on how many customers you have.
> >
> > On Mon, Oct 8, 2018 at 8:24 AM Caroline Tabach <
> caroline.tabach at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I have converted the very large Word user guide to FrameMaker.  I am
> > using
> > > Unstructured Frame 2017
> > >
> > > This is a guide for a product which has general information about how
> to
> > > use the product at the beginning, and a few chapters with general
> > > information at the end.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > The product is made up of  100 "boxes" which belong to 5 families  (I
> am
> > > just calling them boxes for the sake of the example)
> > >
> > > The FrameMaker book I made uses only chapters, not volumes, there is a
> > > chapter for each box family, with information about each of the boxes
> in
> > > that family.
> > >
> > > Each customer only needs to user 4 or 5 "boxes", so we want to make
> user
> > > guides that are smaller and more focused
> > >
> > > I have made a book with everything in it, and now I want to show the
> SME
> > > how we can use Frame to make smaller guides. I am wondering about the
> > best
> > > way to do this.
> > >
> > > 1. Make 5 books each with one box family in it, which will contain info
> > > about all the boxes in that family as well as the general information.
> > end
> > > users will receive the guide with info about the box family, they will
> > have
> > > info about 15 boxes even if they only bought one
> > >
> > > 2. Redo the guide that I did and make the box families to be volumes,
> and
> > > then each box is a chapter. .
> > >
> > > This means it will be easy to add or remove boxes from the guide, this
> > also
> > > means it is possible to customize the guides per customers
> > > The company are using heading numbering, so this means redoing all of
> the
> > > heading of all the paragraph styles, which might get complicated
> > >
> > > 3. Another idea I had was to set the book up as described above, with a
> > > chapter for each box family, but to have each box as a text inset, and
> be
> > > able to create user guides per box. Highly customizing this, but means
> I
> > > don't have to mess with the numbering, but maybe this will make life
> > > complicated
> > >
> > > What would you recommend?
> > >
> > > Are there advantages and disadvantages of each method?
> > >
> > > Thanks for your ideas
> > >
> > > --
> > > Caroline Tabach
> > > Technical/Marcom Writer
> > > e-mail: caroline.tabach at gmail.com
> > > _______________________________________________
> > >
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> >
> >
> > --
> > Lin Sims
> > _______________________________________________
> >
> > This message is from the Framers mailing list
> >
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> >
>
>
> --
> Caroline Tabach
> Technical/Marcom Writer
> e-mail: caroline.tabach at gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
>
> This message is from the Framers mailing list
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-- 
Lin Sims