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Using same document multiple times in a book

Community Beginner ,
Jun 05, 2018 Jun 05, 2018

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I am using unstructured FrameMaker 13 to create machine user manuals. The machines have units that are used multiple times throughout the machine in different sections. We organize our FrameMaker book manuals the same way our machines are organized, so we have a section for each machine section with the documents that cover the units in each section. Some unit documents must be present in more than one section of the book as shown below:

Machine Section 100

     Unit A document

     Unit B document

     Unit C document

     Unit D document

Machine Section 200

     Unit A document

     Unit G document

     Unit C document

     Unit X document

     Unit F document

     Unit G document

The problem is FrameMaker doesn't let me import the same document twice into the book, so I can't list the documents I want in each section as shown above. To get around this, we developed a separate book section for these documents and removed them from the machine sections. We direct our readers to this separate book section to find the documents missing from the machine section they are looking at. This is confusing for our readers and annoying for us.

1. How could we fix this issue in unstructured Frame?

2. Would this issue be eliminated if we migrated to structured Frame?

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Community Expert ,
Jun 05, 2018 Jun 05, 2018

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Why not just make each Machine Section xxx into a book? Then you can use the master book-of-books concept to build a container for all the sub-book files.

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Community Expert ,
Jun 05, 2018 Jun 05, 2018

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I agree with Jeff.

Also, you might consider text insets or conditional text as ways to blend your content into a more cohesive document.

Migration to structure would be beneficial for many things, but overkill for resolving this specific issue.

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 05, 2018 Jun 05, 2018

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That would work great I think! How do I add a book to a book? Or create a master book-of-books? I thought I could only add a file, folder, or group to a book.

I just tried adding a book to a book just using Add File and that seemed to work OK. Is that the way to do it?

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Community Expert ,
Jun 05, 2018 Jun 05, 2018

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Yup, pretty simple to do - I think it got added around FM9 or so..

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Community Expert ,
Jun 05, 2018 Jun 05, 2018

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re: ...units that are used multiple times throughout the machine in different sections.

How are you incorporating these re-used entities?

re: FrameMaker doesn't let me import the same document twice into the book

A casual test suggests that there is no such limitation on Text Insets (File > Import > File of other .fm files).

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Enthusiast ,
Jun 05, 2018 Jun 05, 2018

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We have developed a concept to realise that. Several customers are using it yet.

We are working with lots of modules, that are imported via textinsets.

But that's to complex to explain that in a few sentences.

One suggestion:

Use DocumentA and DocumentB. In both documents you just only have the same textinset (DocumentC)

So both Documents have the same content (DocumentC).

So the only document you have to edit is DocumentC.

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 14, 2018 Jun 14, 2018

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I am testing this and I am trying to number my chapters within each book. It works but then when I click away to another book, some of the chapter numbers change in the book I just did. It seems like a glitch or is something else going on? I am just going into the numbering properties and setting Chapter # 1 and then Continue Numbering From Previous Chapter in Book for the other chapters in that book.

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Community Expert ,
Jun 14, 2018 Jun 14, 2018

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So have you created a master book and then treated each Machine Section xxx as sub-book? If so, then all you need to open is the master, set the numbering properties on the first doc or book to start at 1 (or whatever scheme you want to use), then select all remaining sub-books and set the numbering to Continue Numbering From Previous, then Update.

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 14, 2018 Jun 14, 2018

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Yes. I want each chapter within each sub-book to be numbered, so I was opening the first sub-book and numbering from 1-however many docs and then opening the second sub-book and numbering where the last one left off and onward. The problem is when I was done numbering chapters, the chapter numbers didn't stay what they should be, they started showing up as other random numbers. I numbered the chapters in the first sub-book from 1-4 and then clicked to the second sub-book and numbered those chapters. Then when I clicked back to the first sub-book, the chapter numbers were 1, 7, 3, 4 or some other combination. I've had this happen before and usually just renumbering works, but in this case the numbering isn't sticking for any of the sub-books.

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Community Expert ,
Jun 14, 2018 Jun 14, 2018

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I'm unsure of what you are considering a chapter in your schema outlined in your original post - is it Machine Section 100 or Unit A document?

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 14, 2018 Jun 14, 2018

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Unit A Document

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Contributor ,
Jun 15, 2018 Jun 15, 2018

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I'm interested in this issue, too.

Reuse of files:

Some unit documents must be present in more than one section of the book as shown below:

Machine Section 100

     Unit A document

     Unit B document

     Unit C document

     Unit D document

Machine Section 200

     Unit A document

     Unit G document

     Unit C document

     Unit X document

     Unit F document

     Unit G document

  • Unit A in Machine Section 100 and in Machine Section 200, too? Makes sense, but only if the two sections are printed in different documents. Otherwise, using cross references is a better editorial habit.
  • Unit G twice in Machine Section 200? Why? What's the editorial point?

Numbering:

What are you trying to achieve? How should the numbering look like?

Example 1:

Machine Section 100

     Unit A document

Chap. 1
     Unit B documentChap. 2
     Unit B documentChap. 3
     Unit D documentChap. 4
Machine Section 200
     Unit A documentChap. 5
     Unit G documentChap. 6
     Unit C documentChap. 7
     Unit X documentChap. 8
     Unit F documentChap. 9
     Unit G documentChap. 10

Example 2:

Machine Section 100

     Unit A document

Chap. 1
     Unit B documentChap. 2
     Unit B documentChap. 3
     Unit D documentChap. 4
Machine Section 200
     Unit A documentChap. 1
     Unit G documentChap. 2
     Unit C documentChap. 3
     Unit X documentChap. 4
     Unit F documentChap. 5
     Unit G documentChap. 6

Example 3:

Machine Section 100

     Unit A document

Chap. 100-1
     Unit B documentChap. 100-2
     Unit B documentChap. 100-3
     Unit D documentChap. 100-4
Machine Section 200
     Unit A documentChap. 200-1
     Unit G documentChap. 200-2
     Unit C documentChap. 200-3
     Unit X documentChap. 200-4
     Unit F documentChap. 200-5
     Unit G documentChap. 200-6

Example 4 (Suppose there are 26 units/chapters: Unit A-Z):

Machine Section 100

     Unit A document

Chap. 1
     Unit B documentChap. 2
     Unit B documentChap. 3
     Unit D documentChap. 4
Machine Section 200
     Unit A documentChap. 1
     Unit G documentChap. 7
     Unit C documentChap. 3
     Unit X documentChap. 24
     Unit F documentChap. 6
     Unit G documentChap. 7

I think, one can easily find more crazy numberings. What's your goal?

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 15, 2018 Jun 15, 2018

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Text insets and cross-references won't work because when I re-use the documents in a different manual, and the machine has a different combination of units in different machine sections, the relationships between the documents will be different and the text insets and cross-references won't be correct anymore. Updating these per machine manual would take too much time. Our machines are customized per customer.

Lothar, to answer your first two questions, I'm trying to organize the manuals to spatially match what a customer sees when they look at our machines, so they can logically navigate the manuals to find what they are looking for based first on the machine section they are looking at and then the specific unit, such as a conveyor or a knife. The machines are the size of your house and multiple units are used multiple times on one machine in different machine sections (they are numbered like 100, 200, 300, etc.). Sometimes the same unit can be used twice or more within the same machine section (hence the "unit G used twice in machine section 200" example). This is all printed in the same manual.

I want to accomplish Example 1, but like I said above, using a book of books approach and then trying to number the chapters as shown in Example 1 isn't working because one chapter can't have more than one chapter number designation at once. Unless there is a way around this?

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Community Expert ,
Jun 15, 2018 Jun 15, 2018

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IIRC numbering should be set at the book level & not at the document one, but since my book-of-books output is HTML (via RH) I don't really care about page numbering & when I do print to PDF, it's always just one of the sub-books.

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Contributor ,
Jun 15, 2018 Jun 15, 2018

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A Quick & Dirty solution?

Many insets in a book:

But it works. Continuous numbering:

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 15, 2018 Jun 15, 2018

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I figured out why the chapter numbers are changing. When I change the chapter number for one unit document in one sub-book, and it's resused in a different sub-book, it can't get assigned two different chapter numbers for two different sub-books, so it's whatever I set it at last in both, so one of the sub-books is incorrect.

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