N. Jain asked: > I am learning FrameMaker 7.1. I have many times coming across posts > mentioning text insets. I am confused. What is a text inset and how to insert > it? Is a text insert different from a text frame? Please pardon me if my > question sounds foolish.
A text inset is a text flow that is contained in some external FrameMaker file and that is inserted by reference rather than by copying. It is exactly parallel to inserting the contents of an external graphic file by reference rather than by copying and pasting. Text insets offer an advantage when you have chunks of text that appear in multiple places, either in the same book or in different books, but need to have the same content in all instances. You maintain one master copy of the content and insert it by reference in any file that needs it. This can be particularly useful for things like legal "boilerplate" (disclaimer paragraphs, trademark acknowledgements, etc.), common notices or warnings, or any piece of description that is used in multiple places. Another advantage is that the appearance of the inset is determined by the style definitions in each different file that references the inset; you may have the same text from the same source file with markedy different appearance in different books. Note that I referred to an inset as a text _flow_ that is inserted by reference. In many cases may be convenient to have each inset in its own FrameMaker file, but there may be cases where it's more convenient to use multi-flow files to contain multiple separate inset chunks. For example, you may have one file that contains a half-dozen named flows, each of which contains a different warning paragraph. -Fred Ridder _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live SkyDrive lets you share files with faraway friends. http://www.windowslive.com/skydrive/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_skydrive_052008
