Ken Poshedly wrote: > Unfortunately, at his prior location, another FM user (more > knowledgeable than my coworker) showed my coworker what I call a "hack" > to get a document done in a fraction of the time that it would > ordinarily take. Specifically, he uses "PrintScreen32" to take screen > shots of existing graphics in the Word or pdf Chinglish books we get > from the home office and then pastes them directly into his FM > document. No muss, no fuss -- and no record of any filename or any > other details about any of the graphics in his documents. > > He also does this with text blocks (sometimes entire pages) from the > Chinglish books and simply pastes those text blocks into his FM > documents. The results are? horrendous because no real editing can be > done (and errors in the original text abound). He simply creates small > FrameMaker text blocks over incorrect words or sentences and types in > the few words or sentences needed to fix something. So his FM documents > are pretty much "pictures" of text with white boxes of corrected words > that give his pages that "ransom-letter look".
Reasonable people can disagree about whether the long-term benefits of referenced graphics (updating is practically effortless) are worth a little more time and process up front. I'm firmly in the import by reference camp myself. But no reasonable person -- no competent, sane person -- would paste screen shots of text into a doc! How is this even a time-saver over copying and pasting the text itself? Pick your battles. Agree to disagree on the graphics, but tell your cow-orker that "pictures" of text are an abomination, a maintenance nightmare, a sign of computer illiteracy, and simply can't be tolerated. Richard G. Combs Senior Technical Writer Polycom, Inc. richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom 303-223-5111 ------ rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom 303-903-6372 ------
