Expert: Neal Ziring - 5/2/2011

Question
Hello, can you please point me to a discussion on how well conditional text is implemented in Word?  I write manuals for a chip design company and we have perhaps 30 to 50 variables on each chip.  I handle these easily with conditional text in Framemaker.

But to save money the company is thinking about moving to Word.  Primarily, I believe, because most of their designers do not understand Framemaker, and it will be very expensive to have enough Framemaker licenses for all designers.  So they want to stay with the program that they understand, which is MS Word.  

But as I indicate above, I am concerned how a document, or especially a number of documents put together in one Word Master Document, will handle all of the conditions.  For example one chapter on voltage regulators might need to cover 4 different drive strengths, and another chapter on external memories might need to discuss 5 different types of memories or sizes of memories.  These 9 conditional texts would be easily handled in Framemaker.

But how can they be handled in Microsoft Word?  If you have any experience with Word I will appreciate your insight.  

Thanks!

Answer
Bill,

Well, Word does not have a conditional text facility built in.  So it cannot
match Framemaker on its own.  But there is at least one add-on package for Word
that gives it conditional text functionality.  I do not know whether it is
effective, because I have not used it.  If your company wants to switch to Word,
but your documentation requires conditional text, they should probably check out
the LiveLinx package first.

http://www.livelinx.com/contentmanagement/conditional-text.html

There are also tutorials on how to roll your own conditional text facility
using VBA macros, but I wouldn't advise doing that -- then you'd have to
maintain it.

Of course, if you and other designers are already good at Framemaker, the costs
of retraining specialist employees is far higher than buying licenses, so
management should probably think about that.  

If designers only use Framemaker some of the time, like maybe 10% of their
workday, it is also possible to save money by hosting a few copies of Framemaker
on a Windows server and serving up that application using Citrix or some other
product.  (The Unix version of Framemaker had floating licenses, but Adobe
doesn't do that for Mac or Windows.  Grrr.)

Hope this helps...

...nz