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#1
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement,microsoft.public.word.formatting.longdocs
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Word and XML for single sourcing books
As a lone technical writer, I write and maintain several manuals (in MS Word
2003) for products that share many features. Often I reuse content between these manuals. I am trying to decide whether I should use the XML features in Word 2003 (or 2007) to shared content between these manuals. For example, I have safety information that is shared by all product manuals. It would be wonderful to single source this info, so that an update to safety info could update all manuals. Also many of my manuals belong to product lines and all manuals in a particular line share much of the same info. Has anyone used XML in Word 2003 or 2007 to single source content? Any advice as to how well it works for this purpose? After researching this issue a little, I'm somewhat confused by the options for implementing XML in Word. I found a newsgroup posting that suggested using Word as an XML editor for the DocBook schema. Another posting suggested using XSL transformation in Word along with the xslt:if and xslt:choose tags. I suspect there are many other implementations for single sourcing, and I'd appreciate any advice as to which ones are easier and simpler. By the way, I don't expect any option to be truly easy or simple. Thanks!José PS - These are books that I'm thinking about buying: XML in Office 2003: Information Sharing with Desktop XML by Charles F. Goldfarb and Priscilla Walmsley and Office 2003 XML for Power Users by Matthew MacDonald |
#2
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement,microsoft.public.word.formatting.longdocs
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Word and XML for single sourcing books
Hi Jose,
As a lone technical writer, I write and maintain several manuals (in MS Word 2003) for products that share many features. Often I reuse content between these manuals. I am trying to decide whether I should use the XML features in Word 2003 (or 2007) to shared content between these manuals. For example, I have safety information that is shared by all product manuals. It would be wonderful to single source this info, so that an update to safety info could update all manuals. Also many of my manuals belong to product lines and all manuals in a particular line share much of the same info. Has anyone used XML in Word 2003 or 2007 to single source content? Any advice as to how well it works for this purpose? The XML features in Word don't really provide this, unless you're using a transform to generate the documents dynamically. More commonly, shared content is saved in one or more Word documents then linked in using Insert/File (with a link). Under the covers, Word uses an IncludeText field to manage the link. Cindy Meister INTER-Solutions, Switzerland http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005) http://www.word.mvps.org This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-) |
#3
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement,microsoft.public.word.formatting.longdocs
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Word and XML for single sourcing books
Hi Cindy,
I am exhaustively using IncludeText in my documents thanks to your article, "How to Use IncludeText Fields" at http://daiya.mvps.org/includetext.htm. I was wondering whether XML would handle this issue better, but your reply has set me straight. I'll continue using IncludeText. Thanks! José "Cindy M." wrote in message news:VA.00000ad4.00b17070@speedy... Hi Jose, As a lone technical writer, I write and maintain several manuals (in MS Word 2003) for products that share many features. Often I reuse content between these manuals. I am trying to decide whether I should use the XML features in Word 2003 (or 2007) to shared content between these manuals. For example, I have safety information that is shared by all product manuals. It would be wonderful to single source this info, so that an update to safety info could update all manuals. Also many of my manuals belong to product lines and all manuals in a particular line share much of the same info. Has anyone used XML in Word 2003 or 2007 to single source content? Any advice as to how well it works for this purpose? The XML features in Word don't really provide this, unless you're using a transform to generate the documents dynamically. More commonly, shared content is saved in one or more Word documents then linked in using Insert/File (with a link). Under the covers, Word uses an IncludeText field to manage the link. Cindy Meister INTER-Solutions, Switzerland http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005) http://www.word.mvps.org This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-) |