Hi all
I’m helping a client to develop a library of technical and marketing documents, all of which are created in Word and many of which share some common content. As the client’s products are technical and havemany possible variations, maintaining a handle on all of the ‘bits & pieces’ is becoming a nightmare – one of the key challenges is remembering which publications need to be updated when content (such as specifications) change.
It has become clear that they need some kind of “document assembly” solution, that will allow me to create and maintain a library of free-standing content components, then build publications from these components. I’m intimately familiar with Word’s Master Documents feature, but it is far too flaky and rudimentary to do the job. We need something that will allow me to pick and choose from individual components in a network repository and apply a template to the entire resulting document.
One option I looked at was Adobe Framemaker, which looks like it would do the job, but it also does a whole lot more that we don’t need to pay for, as well as appearing to be quite an old product.
A quick Google and searching previous Lounge posts has revealed products such as HotDocs, Ghostfill and Pathagoras. I’d be very grateful if any Loungers could take a few minutes to let me know of any relevant experience with products of this type – positive or negative.
As always, thanks in advance to those who kindly take the time to help!
Best regards
Neil
