Need to make a .book with subset of final book - ok to put in original .book folder?

Report · Sep 30, 2016

I need to produce an interim manual for review.

This is about half of the overall project and thus will contain roughly half of the original book's chapters.

Is it okay to make a second .book file and place it in the same folder as the full .book file?

While this might seem like a dimwit question, I've learned to tread lightly when it comes to FrameMaker references and internal interconnections between files, as well as FrameMaker's penchant to treat cross-refs and links as absolute rather than relative.

More detail:

The people working on this have named the original (full) book as "book.book."

Is there any problem making, say, a (~half-length) "10-1-16.book" and putting that file in the same folder as "book.book"?

Report · Sep 30, 2016

Is it okay to make a second .book file and place it in the same folder as the full .book file?

You are asking if you can have two FrameMaker book files in a single folder? Yes. And the chapter files can be part of one or both books. When you move from working on one book to the other, just update the book to update all of the numbering: chapters, paragraphs, pages, x-refs, generated files, etc.

Report · Sep 30, 2016

Creating another book & sticking it in the same location as the original book file is fine. What you may run into is that by adding files to the new book, you can disrupt the original book's files. Things like Show/Hide settings or pagination may have to set in one temporarily & then fixed back in the original. There are some properties are located at the book level & won't interfere and some are associated with the file (.fm) and will get confused when used in 2 places at once.

Report · Sep 30, 2016

Thanks, Barb and Jeff.

VERY much appreciated!

Report · Sep 30, 2016

Jeff brought up a good point about the show/hide settings, which goes beyond re-numbering. You can control the show/hide condition tags at the book level (if you are using them). In this workflow, you want to be sure that you are handling everything you can at the book level—and not at the document level—or you will run into the issues he is alluding to.

Report · Sep 30, 2016

So true Barb - I did a "print-only" book out of some of my sub-books & messed up my show/hide settings inadvertently - took a while to mess about with all of that back in my "real" book after I had finished with the "printed" one.