What is the best way to manage different versions of a book?

[Alan B100]

I have some books (Technical Manuals) made up of dozens of chapters with each chapter made up of several files. Each page has it's effective date and revision number inluded in the footer using dedicated paragraph tags. These manuals are printed/saved to PDF for use.

Each manual has a List Of Effective Pages (LOEP), with effective dates and revision number, which has been created with the List of Paragraphs function. These books are set up so that the LOEP page layout is retained and the content automatically regenerated when the book is updated.

There are a lot of pages and managing the LEOP manually is a lot of work. Prior to using Framemaker the work in updating the LEOP was much much more than the actual updating of the text. Hence one of the reasons for using Framemaker.

The manuals require updating from time to time. Usually this involves just a few new or updated pages scattered through the manual. The date and revision number on the page are are updated when the changes are made. These changes are automatically imported into the LEOP when the book is updated.

My original intention when it came to making ammendments to the manuals was to make a copy of the book file and change the name to reflect the revision name/date, and then make the required changes. This preserved the old version. We are required to keep previous versions of each manual.

However it seems that the LEOP links to the pages in the book get broken with the name change. This completely negates the reason for being able to update the LEOP automatically.

Long story short, how do other people manage similar manuals?

My solution so far is to only keep the old version of the manual in PDF and keep the Framemaker book as a working version with it's original name and modify this book and print to PDF with the version/date only applying to the PDF copies.

Are there any better ideas?

Thank you.

[Winfried Reng]

Hi Alan,

The links should not be broken, when the file name of the target file does not change!

Links are relative, as long as the path to the target file does not go up to the root directory or to another drive.

Then the links would be absolute, and links would be broken.

Links would also be broken, when the folder name in the path to the target file is changed.

Therefore: Which file names and folder names do you change?

Are other lists like the TOC broken as well? Or are these intact?

Do you use sub-books or folders in your book?

Best regards, Winfried

[Alan B100]

Hello Winifried,

Thank you for your reply. What you have said about the links not being broken is exactly what I expected to happen.

It's been sometime since I tried to copy the files to make another revision. I did this when I first created one of the manuals to prove the concept for when revisision were needed in the future. It didn't work like I expected and as I had more pressing jobs I didn't have time to figure out what went wrong.  I don't remember what happened as far as the TOC lists etc.

From memory all I did was give the book a new name by doing a "Save As".

We don't use sub books. Each chapter has it's own folder. The chapter folders are all on the same "Master" folder. It's in this "Master" folder where the book file is saved. 

Today a colleague spoke to me about his attempt to do the same thing for a revision he was working on. It wasn't successful either though I cannot vouch for the method he used. 

It looks like I need to go back and try again for myself and see what happens.

[FrameMaker-dk]

You can't make a new copy of the book file merely by using "save as" because all generated files will stop working.  What you can do is using "save as" but after doing that, you will copy all the old generated files and rename them according to the new book file name a replace the - now new and empty - generated files with the old ones. This will make FrameMaker "believe" it has the correct generated files and then you can update the book.

[FrameMaker-dk]

When I have to do this kind of thing, I usually prefer using Rick Quattros Archive Script. I archive the entire book with graphics, insets and the "entire thing" into a new folder and do the revisions. Next round of revisions... same procedure. This makes sure that all former versions of the manuals are working and have integrity.

[Winfried Reng]

All my files of a book are always in a separate folder.

Therefore I just make a copy of this folder to get a new release version.

When you Save As the book file to another folder, then the locations of the single files of the book are kept. Only the paths will change.

Therefore, your approach should work. Only do not use FrameMaker to make a copy, but your file manager. Or Rick Quattro's script.

http://www.frameexpert.com/store/index.html

[Alan B100]

Hello Winfried,

I apologise for spelling your name incorrectly in my other post. I cannot edit the post. I'm sorry.

Alan

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

I manage versioning of my projects by creating a ZIP of the current version, and naming the archive accordingly.

This allows me to continue to use my "current" book file and working generated files without slowing down to create, manage, rename, relink, redefine.

Since this method means the archive (by definition) already exists, I don't have to worry about being able to recreate any of the previous versions of the project;  I just decompress the approriate ZIP in an appropriate location.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

This is exactly the same method I use. 

I do a couple of things depending on the project...

Once I make the zip backup, I approve all track changes edits. That way, each version has only the edits made during that proof cycle.

I'll sometimes remove some large graphics from the zips if they hasn't changed to keep the file size down. 

[Alan B100]

Thank for all the replies. I've got some good info to work with next time I'm back in the office. I do this role part time and it will be a day or two before I back there.

Thanks again for the tips.