RE: FrameMaker 8 books advice please

[Fred Ridder <docudoc -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Laura Ferguson wrote:> This sounds like a good idea - one question though - I've found that if
> I keep a file (let's say used for Product B only with Product B
> conditional text in it and nothing else) in a book that I'm generating
> for Product A, I get blank pages at that point in the book. Am I missing
> something basic?
 
I think this gets back to your original question. If you have a collection
of component files, and some of them get used in some deliverables but 
not in others, the best way to handle this is by making multiple book files
that include only the components you need in each case. This is the way
FrameMaker's whole document paradigm was designed to be used. If you
use only one book file and hide the contents of unwanted components,
the empty components will still affect the book because *every* 
component in a FrameMaker book starts a new page even if there is
zero content in the component. 
 
Wendy's suggestion is a great approach for managing varying content
that is on a relatively small scale (variables are great for managing 
varying words or phrases, and conditional text is great for managing 
differences on the sentence, paragraph, or even section level), but 
once you're talking about file-level differences (e.g. whole chapters
that are or are not included), separate books is really the optimal 
approach. But you can actually combine both approaches by making
the setup file that Wendy refers to a component of the book so that
everythign you need is "packaged" together. You just need to make 
the setup file the the very last one in the book and either use the
"Print Files in Book" command to print all but that component, or 
else delete the page(s) it produces after you do a "Print Book". 
 
-Fred Ridder
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