I have a writer whose guide contains a bunch of short descriptions for XML code. Several of the descriptions are the same in many parts of the guide.
When she sends the guide to review, if a SME changes the wording in one occurrence of a description, she needs to update the description everywhere else that it occurs.
For obvious reasons, she'd like to automate this a bit more. Following are the ways that I could think of:
1. Use cross-references to a central file that contains all the descriptions.
* Advantage - When you update the description in the central file, they'll automatically update in the other files.
* Disadvantage - You'd have to create a cross-reference to each paragraph. So, for multiple-paragraph descriptions, you'd have several cross-references. Plus, longer descriptions might run up against the character limit of a x-ref.
2. Put the descriptions in Excel and reference the Excel cells in Frame.
* Advantage - Same as above.
* Disadvantage - You can't format text within a cell(AFAIK). So you couldn't make certain words bold or italic.
3. Use insets.
* Advantage - Same as above.
* Disadvantage - That would be a lot of insets (probably hundreds) with only a little text (a small description) in each. Might be hard to manage.
4. Use some database software.
* Advantage - Maybe the same as above. (?)
* Disadvantage - We don't have anything set up to do something like this.
Are there any other possibilities that I'm not thinking of?
Rick
Rick Henkel
Senior Systems Developer
When she sends the guide to review, if a SME changes the wording in one occurrence of a description, she needs to update the description everywhere else that it occurs.
For obvious reasons, she'd like to automate this a bit more. Following are the ways that I could think of:
1. Use cross-references to a central file that contains all the descriptions.
* Advantage - When you update the description in the central file, they'll automatically update in the other files.
* Disadvantage - You'd have to create a cross-reference to each paragraph. So, for multiple-paragraph descriptions, you'd have several cross-references. Plus, longer descriptions might run up against the character limit of a x-ref.
2. Put the descriptions in Excel and reference the Excel cells in Frame.
* Advantage - Same as above.
* Disadvantage - You can't format text within a cell(AFAIK). So you couldn't make certain words bold or italic.
3. Use insets.
* Advantage - Same as above.
* Disadvantage - That would be a lot of insets (probably hundreds) with only a little text (a small description) in each. Might be hard to manage.
4. Use some database software.
* Advantage - Maybe the same as above. (?)
* Disadvantage - We don't have anything set up to do something like this.
Are there any other possibilities that I'm not thinking of?
Rick
Rick Henkel
Senior Systems Developer