File Management in FM 8

[cvgs]

I'm a relative newbie to structured FM, but love it. However, I wonder how people are managing their files.

To be able to generate a book and keep links intact, the book must reside in the same folder as the ditamaps and xml topics. Doesn't this make huge folders that are difficult to search?

How are people handling this issue?

[Guest]

Hi Mary,
I can relate totally. My "coping method" (I wouldn't call it a solution) was to name files so that sorting the folder either by name or by type would group all related content alphabetically.

I did this by making the noun my major organizing principle, and using it as the first portion of the file name. (This, by the way, I learned from a professional organizer, not a content management or dita specialist). I add on the action or characteristic I'm describing, so I get "noun-verb.xml," "noun-adjective.xml," or "noun-verb-adjective."

I chose this because I'm writing for company in which verb usage varies widely. They'll say they're "printing," "generating," "issuing," "producing" or even "doing a run of," but the noun they use--"cheques"--is always the same.

This method only becomes unwieldy if I have to add a verb and an adjective _and_ if content about the qualified noun does not really belong with content about the unqualified noun. For instance, in my situation, it doesn't really make sense to group content about "deceased clients" with content about "new clients." I'm not at that point yet, but when I'm ready to separate the living from the dead I will have to decide whether to create a pseudo-compound noun for the dead ("deceased-client"), or to refer to them simply as "deceased."

Karen

[cvgs]

Karen,

Thanks for responding to my post. Frankly, I'm surprised that this hasn't had more of a discussion, since it's an issue that anyone working in structured FM must be facing.

Your coping solution makes sense. In my case, the noun-adjective would be customer_adding, customer_deleting, and customer_modifying.

It is also going to be a challenge to keep the number of files down to a managable number. I'm thinking about cloning the present release and using it as the basis for the next release, and deleting any files that haven't been modified in the last year.