On 3/2/2010 7:54 PM, Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
Gary Schnabl wrote:
A tutorial I would like to see would be a definitive, detailed guide
for employing Writer with master documents for creating books and
such. Master documents is a major area where Writer compares
unfavorably with Adobe FrameMaker. Having a solid tutorial with
master documents, possibly with macros, user source files, and sample
templates added would be a nice addition. Such a tutorial would need
to employ much of the functions that OOo has.
If any writer or team of writers and editors wants to author/edit
such a tutorial, I would volunteer as its lead technical editor.
Gary, I'm glad you've raised this topic again, as it's something I
would also like to see us provide, to expand upon and supplement the
Master Docs chapter in the Writer Guide (which I am in the process of
updating). Unfortunately, I never have any time to actually contribute
to the effort, so I hope some others may come forward to work on it.
--Jean
What I had in mind was essentially employing the actual published OOo
chapter files (after being reformulated with a revised (book or
whatever) chapter template as subdocuments for this master-document
(bookmaking) tutorial. That way, the subdocuments would be already
available AND be reusable at a later date after they get revised for
future OOo versions.
The resulting product would then be the entire (printable book) guide:
Getting Started, Writer Guide, Calc Guide, etc. The subdocuments would
then be continually available and updated, along with anything new that
got added along the way. Then, only a small portion of the tutorial
itself would need updating in order to make it also current with future
OOo versions afterwards.
The tutorial could actually become a standalone manual for creating
"books" with OOo. So, the tutorial would be deemed to serve as an
internal representation using both front-end and back-end "programming."
The front-end is anything specifically related to the specific
subdocuments used for the resulting document, and its back end would
deal with the actual physical output:--a PDF to be sent to a commercial
printer or, perhaps, an ebook formatted for a Kindle or an iPad.
Anyway, if any writers, reviewers, and editors want to undertake this
project, I could serve as the technical-editor glue that keeps the
project on course.
Gary
--
Gary Schnabl
Southwest Detroit, two miles NORTH! of Canada--Windsor, that is...
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