duplicate chapters manual?

**frits** · 07 February 2007, 06:24 PM

Hi Antony,

Thanks for the offer, but I don't need a another manual. I checked it again and nothing is missing, there are just some extra pages.

It supprises me that no one else has the same " bug".

Greetings,
Frits

**amoore** · 07 February 2007, 06:30 PM

Originally Posted by AntonyF

The manual is done in Word, and it wears off a year of my life every time I compile it. Word is erm.. 'unhelpful'.. at times. So this is potentially frightening for me!

Oh good @(*&#!*$^. That's one of the poorer choices you could make for doing this manual. And there's no reason whatsoever for you to be shortening your life.

As jclements says, Corel Ventura is the way to go for these things. You could have done the manual in perhaps a third of the time it took you in Word and with many fewer headaches. (On several comparisons I've run, it was more like one seventh of the time it took to do it in Word.)

You don't want to be using Quark or InDesign for the manual either. They both have their strengths, but they are not built for this sort of document. Once you have the idea of how Ventura works (and that isn't hard), it's a joy to use in the way that Xara is. Even if you pay full list price (about $600 US), Ventura will pay for itself in time saved (not to mention headaches not endured

).

BTW, I'm currently assisting in the publication of third-party manuals for MS Office using Ventura. The person who's doing the bulk of the work last saw Ventura over 10 years ago. Since then, he's been working with InDesign, Word, and I think Quark. 2 weeks ago, I gave him a crash course in Ventura that lasted less than two hours. Since then, he and the author have updated between 400 and 500 pages, including text revisions, replacement of all screen grabs (of which there are many), captions and callouts with arrow placements, and index entries. Current expectation is that the pdf for this first book will go to the printer on Friday.

Of all the desktop publishing apps, Ventura is the most flexible and the most efficient.

**The Alien** · 08 February 2007, 07:17 AM

Originally Posted by frits

Hi Antony,

Thanks for the offer, but I don't need a another manual. I checked it again and nothing is missing, there are just some extra pages.

It supprises me that no one else has the same " bug".

Greetings,
Frits

You know what this means, don't you?
It means someone else is out there who's missing a chapter in his Xara manual
Dun DUN DUUUUNNN!!!

**AntonyF** · 08 February 2007, 09:08 AM

Originally Posted by amoore

Oh good @(*&#!*$^. That's one of the poorer choices you could make for doing this manual. And there's no reason whatsoever for you to be shortening your life.

It wasn't my choice, as Word isn't designed for such things and doesn't even support CMYK (which has led to Miro having to do lots of repair work on the PDFs). But the issues of stitching the chapters together aside, I've found it quite good actually. It was just the end process that was a nightmare.

And it is better than Quark.

But then most stuff is. Notepad is probably preferable.

I will keep Ventura in mind though if I want to do anything like that myself in the future. Not that I would though.

**itsfransie** · 08 February 2007, 11:08 AM

High time to port the good old !Impression to the Windows platform...

**parahandy** · 08 February 2007, 11:09 AM

No duplicates here either.

**David O'Neil** · 08 February 2007, 04:09 PM

Originally Posted by AntonyF

...But the issues of stitching the chapters together aside, I've found it quite good actually...

How did you stitch them together? Have you used a master document? I'm just curious, as I've created a book with over 17 chapters in Word, and I've had no problems with the basics, and it includes a table of contents and an index using a master document to stitch everything together.

I also thought that Word respected the color space of any imported graphics, so if you only inserted CMYK art, everything should work, but you make this sound like an incorrect assumption. I only used greyscale, so don't have any experience with that.

It was just the end process that was a nightmare.

The 'stitching them together' part?

David

**WolfMoonHP** · 08 February 2007, 04:32 PM

Working in Word...I just finished my dissertation this past year, finally got my PhD (took nearly 10 years...sigh...) but did the whole thing in MS Word. Before my final edit it was over 1,200 pages, finally trimmed down to 857 plus index, bibliography, etc.

All my graphics were done with Xtreme, by the way. (Most done before Pro was available.)

Had no trouble with Word at all, but then I've been using it so long that its quirks probably seem so familiar I think of them as features...LOL)

Anyway, to get back on topic, I checked my basic Xtreme manual and the Pro supplement. No extra pages, missing pages, etc. Very well done.

And Antony, whatever headaches the software may have given you, your final product is absolutely superb. I've read a LOT of software manuals, and this one stands head and shoulders above almost all the rest.

Congratulations. This superb software deserves nothing less than a superb manual, and you delivered!

Thanks...
---
Will

**Colin Carpenter** · 08 February 2007, 05:45 PM

Originally Posted by WolfMoonHP

And Antony, whatever headaches the software may have given you, your final product is absolutely superb. I've read a LOT of software manuals, and this one stands head and shoulders above almost all the rest.

Congratulations. This superb software deserves nothing less than a superb manual, and you delivered!
---
Will

I totally agree ... writing a manual is one of the hardest jobs I've ever had to do. It's tough to stay interested and to pitch it at the right level for the reader.

This is almost certainly the best I've ever read. Well done

**masque** · 08 February 2007, 07:10 PM

I agree, the manual is superb and an easy read. I have no extra or missing pages though I did get two Pro Supplements. Is anybody short of one?

derek