RE: This old chestnut again

Subject: RE: This old chestnut again
From: <WilliamFLawrence -at- eaton -dot- com>
To: <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 08:27:32 -0500

Paul,

Having Sharepoint around does not obligate you to use Word. I've spent
part of my career as a Sharepoint administrator and frankly you can use
it to do pretty much whatever you want. If your source is in Docbook or
Dita XML, or even in good ol' fashioned Frame files, just use it as a
repository that you access through "web folders." It'll look pretty
much just like part of the network file system to your tools.

The other thing that you can do is to use Acrobat Pro to run your
reviews as "shared reviews" of PDF documents. Acrobat Pro knows about
Sharepoint and can use it as a repository for the review copy and for
all of the reviewer comments (which are stored in separate XML files).
No worries.

Also, there are third-party XML additions to Sharepoint that make it a
true XML repository. I've not played with them, so I can't vouch for
their capabilities.

By the way, I'll echo what everyone else has said about master
documents: they don't work. What does work (not that your management
will allow it) is to use the master document feature in Open Office
Writer to create the books from your Word files.

Cheers,

Bill


-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+williamflawrence=eaton -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+williamflawrence=eaton -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com]
On Behalf Of jopakent -at- comcast -dot- net
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 6:13 PM
To: Word List; TECHWR
Subject: This old chestnut again

I've been looking through the archives for a bit now and I'm not seeing
anything "recent" on this topic. The last post I found was back in 04.

I know (in my heart anyway) that the list of gruesome horrors one can
unleash by using Word's master document "feature" has almost certainly
not gone away. I'm almost certain that I've seen queries relating to
Word 2003, not so sure about 2007.

The problem, Sharepoint is heading our way. That is NOT going to change.
We'll deal with that. The problem is that one of the chief proponents of
this roll-out is touting that because Sharepoint is so tightly
integrated with MS Office, when we upgrade to 2007 in Q1, we'll be able
to use Word to create xml-based, single source documents, relying on
Words powerful master documents feature.

Seriously, that last sentence is not (intentionally anyway) designed to
be considered as a Bulwer-Lytton contest entrant. I understand that the
"xml" that we get from a MS product will not truly be xml. I also
understand that Sharepoint is not (without ridiculous amounts of
customization) going to perform the CMS functions we will need to
perform true single sourcing. I also know that relying on master
documents to document combination is just stepping into madness.

My problem? (sorry for the long setup) I'm trying to find a couple of
posts that document the nightmarish scenario of relying on master
documents to do actual work. I know there are 1 or 2 (maybe even 3)
people who claim that there is a use for these (other than as a means of
getting your writers to head for the exits), but I'm not looking for the
outliers, I'm trying to tap into the main-stream, conventional wisdom.

Can anyone point me to an article, white paper, post, etc. that will
help me avoid this cruel fate?

Thanks in advance,
--
J. Paul Kent
206-383-0539
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Help & Manual is the most powerful authoring tool for technical
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References:
This old chestnut again: From: jopakent

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