On Wed, 2006-18-01 at 21:52 +0000, Daniel Carrera wrote: > >> MSO master documents get corrupted very easily. They break easily. > >> OOo's don't as much. > > > > Do you have any data to back up your opinion that MSO master documents > > get corrupted or break easily? > > Expert opinion from a technical editor of 30 years.
If anybody doubts the problems with MSO master documents: - Go to the Techwriters' list archives at www.techwr-l.com and search for "master documents." Technical writers are exactly the sorts of users who use master documents if they can, but, aside from one or two exceptions, the overwhelming consensus on the list (which consists of over 5000 people, most of them professionals) is that master documents should be avoided on MS Word. Instead, techwriters nurse along massive documents with every trick that they can. These documents are prone to crash, yet even that risk is safer than using master documents. - if that's not enough, go to: http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/WhyMasterDocsCorrupt.htm This site is dedicated to helping users get the most out of MSO. Most of the contents, including this page, are written by Microsoft MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals), people designated by Microsoft as experts with the backgrounds to help others. In other words, it is a pro-Microsoft site, maintained and written by people who have volunteered to help Microsoft and its users. Yet MSO master documents are so notoriously untrustworthy that even this site urges people to avoid them. Basically, the only way to keep MSO master documents from corrupting is to use them so carefully and so sparingly that you cancel out all advantages. Finally, a personal perspective: Having worked on dozens of documents varying from 100-1000 pages, I can personally vouch for the continued unreliability of MSO master documents for over a decade. I have used OOo master documents for four years, and rarely had a problem. In early versions, I had a couple of crashes, but, unlike the case in MS Word, I never lost files as a result. In short, anyone who persists in denying the instability of MSO master documents is going against the cumulative experience of thousands of users for over fifteen years. The problems are too well-documented to argue against unless you suffer from a streak of perversity. -- Bruce Byfield 604-421.7177 Burnaby, BC, Canada http://members.axion.net/~bbyfield --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
