Planning for Document Assembly

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jose
  • Start date Start date
J

Jose

I am consolidating several documents. Instead of the current
arrangement, which is one almost-complete document with several
addenda that are attached depending on the circumstances, we are
trying to create a system in which the operator can check a list and
have the appropriate provisions inserted automatically into the final
document, so that what results is only one document, which will be
assembled automatically depending on the needs. What can I do now,
in the review/redrafting stage, to make it easier later for the
documents to be adapted to a document assembly system?
 
Write a formal style guide and be disciplined in applying it. Ie, use one
style for the heading the begins each provision, and use that style for no
other purpose. If you have different types of provision, use a different,
unique, style for each.
 
Write a formal style guide and be disciplined in applying it.
Ie, use one style for the heading the begins each provision, and
use that style for no other purpose. If you have different types
of provision, use a different, unique, style for each.
Click to expand...

Jez,

Thanks. If there are, say, two provisions that are not likely to
be subbed out and two provisions that are likely to be subbed out,
and if they are at equivalent levels of hierarchy/importance/type
of text, would you suggest using one style for the text that is
likely to be subbed out and another for the text that is likely to
stay? I guess another way of asking this is: assuming that your
advice is because styles are somehow to be used in identifying the
passages to remove (and ensuring a consistent look with the
passages that come in), what other factors would be important; if
style alone would be insufficient to identify the passages that
can get swapped in/out, should I have other markers of some type?
 
Write a formal style guide and be disciplined in applying it.
Ie, use one style for the heading the begins each provision, and
use that style for no other purpose. If you have different types
of provision, use a different, unique, style for each.
Click to expand...

Jez,

Thanks. If there are, say, two provisions that are not likely to
be subbed out and two provisions that are likely to be subbed out,
and if they are at equivalent levels of hierarchy/importance/type
of text, would you suggest using one style for the text that is
likely to be subbed out and another for the text that is likely to
stay? I guess another way of asking this is: assuming that your
advice is because styles are somehow to be used in identifying the
passages to remove (and ensuring a consistent look with the
passages that come in), what other factors would be important; if
style alone would be insufficient to identify the passages that
can get swapped in/out, should I have other markers of some type?
 
I think you're approaching the task from the wrong end. These questions are
better answered by reference to the method that will be used to assemble the
finished document. Yes, it will need something to look for to identify the
elements, and there are any number of ways you could do that: hidden text,
an ID style, footnotes, etc.

If you can find a reference somewhere, look at the source file specification
for the old style (non-compiled) Windows Help files. They could be created
in Word (saved as RTF), and used hard page breaks to separate the topics and
footnotes to identify the title, ID, keywords, etc for each topic.

You could also look at how this is done with XML, which is essentially the
same task.
 
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