TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Because when the next version of your product comes along, those graphics
will change. And you have to remember every place that they are copied into.
If you make a directory under your current project called graphics and
always put the graphics in there, then you know where they are. Then when
the graphic that appears on 34 different pages in your 420 manual changes,
you simply name the new version of the graphic the same name as the old
graphic and save it in the graphics directory. Now it is automatically
updated through out the manual and you have time to do other things. Like
paginate or spell check or index. Otherwise, you are being paid to do it all
by hand - a terrible waste of your already aggressively scheduled time.
And the first time you completely corrupt a 20 meg file right before a
production deadline because the graphics were copied in to it, you won't
think it is a fair trade off at all. Even if you have a backup, there is a
lot of work to be redone and you have no assurance that, after you finish
the changes to the backup, the file won't corrupt again. Or that when it is
time to update the existing manual, that the files have not corrupted while
they just sat. I have seen it far too many times and once during crunch is
too often.
sharon
Sharon Burton
Anthrobytes Consulting
Home of RoboNEWS, the award-winning unofficial RoboHELP Newsletter
www.anthrobytes.com
anthrobytes -at- anthrobytes -dot- com
>My manager seems to think that importing by REFERENCE is harder because
>then you have to remember where you put all of the graphics.! The
>sluggish performance is a fair trade-off, I guess.
>
>But why is maintenance harder?
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Sharon Burton [SMTP:sharonburton -at- EMAIL -dot- MSN -dot- COM]
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 1998 10:39 AM
>> To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
>> Subject: Re: Framemaker questions (long)...
>>
>> Never (OK hardly ever) copy graphics directly into your document. It
>> makes
>> your life harder - you have to find all those graphics when the
>> graphic
>> changes and it will -, FrameMaker hates it - the file size increases
>> dramatically and performance suffers - , and FrameMaker is much more
>> likely
>> to corrupt the file - large file size equals more opportunity.
>>
>> Even if the graphics are small, the file size doesn't increase and the
>> file
>> does not corrupt, please think of the poor writer who will follow you
>> and
>> must make updates to the file. Copying into FrameMaker makes updating
>> and
>> maintaining so hard.
>>
>> sharon
>>
>
>
>
