atw: Re: Screenshots in user doco - Yes or No?

Dear Debbie (H)

What you are experiencing is a really badly built Word file and, almost
certainly as well, the tedium of working with large and graphically rich
files over a networked connection.

The file will work much, much faster if you work with a copy on your
local C: drive, instead of dragging it all across the network to display,
edit, print and save.

(Work locally - for speed - back up remotely, to the network, for safety!)

Another consideration:

Linking to un-embedded external graphics files rather than having them
saved in the Word file will massively reduce the size of the file, possibly
down to a few hundred kilobytes and increase the reliability of the file /
reduce its tendency to corrupt itself.

Word prefers linking to .bmp and .wmf files, which are its native formats
preventing it from tediously trying to convert each image as they move
into view for display.

If you can get your hands on the master graphics files, pop them in
logically named and placed directories, where they should have been
in the first place and, working on a copy of the doc file you have now
replace the embedded graphics with their linked counterparts.

Don't bother trying to extract them from Word.  The results will
be "mixed" dependent on the view / zoom you use at the time,
as Word varies the resolution of graphics according to their
viewable size at the time.

Linking works best if all of the files and the document itself remain in
your control, as the links are not very portable unless on your local
C: drive and archived "Zipped" as a directory-structured package for
extraction elsewhere.

You might not be able to afford the immediate time luxury or want to go
to all the trouble of rebuilding the Word file in question for now, so
working locally should be your best bet here but, in future, manuals
planned (not evolved) to be graphically rich from the start and built in Word
should be constructed with links from an unchangeable local drive
repository.

(Network links, access rights and drive / folder names can and often do
change overnight at the whim of your friendly network administrator, so
beware of using graphics files links over a network.)

Also, distributing as PDF, rather than Word, or even as HTML pages, if
electronic distribution is to be the ultimate fate of the file in question, will
prevent a lot of unnecessary angst.

Enough on this for now.

HTH.

Regards,

Michael Granat
Write Ideas
www.writeideas.com.au

At 19:12 29/03/2006, you wrote:
Hi all
Have been reading this thread with much interest. VERY timely as I am currently editing (and I mean editing) a 'User' guide, written by someone else (not a techwriter). It is chock a block full of screen shots. The document started at 143 A4 pages and a whopping 34,377KB. Almost every single instruction to 'do' something is accompanied by a screen shot. It screen shot is sized and inserted from margin to margin. Call-outs have been used everywhere and these are surrounded by MOUNTAINS of unused white space, yes I know this is ALL adding to the document size.
Even just starting to work with the document (in Word of course) is a nightmare - it takes forever to open, save, the works.

Overkillus maximus!!!

So, screen-shots - don't talk to me a bout screen shots.


Grrrr
Cheers
Debbie

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