How the hell do I organize 2000+ pages of engineering standards and specifications?

[brxndxn]

I'm currently working on a huge project where a large corporation (yup, a corporation) is trying to standardize their standards and specify their specifications. They want it to be technically-written with consistent language - this is hard to do with hundreds of different authors for hundreds of different sections all in a standardized outline format. This, they hope, will be one consistent, growing document so that any contractor will know exactly how to meet their engineering goals and any employee will be able to update this document with relative ease.


Anyway.. I started a Microsoft Word Outline for one of the chapters and I think it will eventually include the other 16. Each chapter will be between 200 to 500 pages. I'm planning on having a separate .doc for each chapter. Each chapter will have it's own table of contents.


I am trying to avoid having to write VBA script (cause' I'd hafta learn it of course). Does anyone know of any macros that allow for one-click printing of a certain section of a MS Word outline?

 

[Ameesh]

Save yourself a whole bunch of time and trouble and put all the documents in XML and use XSLT sheets to transform them, you can then search the specifications, and organize them in any way you want there are practically hundreds of different things you could do to ake more productive use use of them if they were all XML.

 

[Beau]

<< Save yourself a whole bunch of time and trouble and put all the documents in XML and use XSLT sheets to transform them, you can then search the specifications, and organize them in any way you want there are practically hundreds of different things you could do to ake more productive use use of them if they were all XML. >>

I was just going to say that. But then again, he'd have to learn XML. But it'd be well worth it and a great investment for the company.

 

[Ameesh]

<<

<< Save yourself a whole bunch of time and trouble and put all the documents in XML and use XSLT sheets to transform them, you can then search the specifications, and organize them in any way you want there are practically hundreds of different things you could do to ake more productive use use of them if they were all XML. >>

I was just going to say that. But then again, he'd have to learn XML. But it'd be well worth it and a great investment for the company. >>




yeah but XML isnt difficult, its not a language and its hould only take him 2 days max to figure out how to do this stuff, the XSLT may take longer but creating the XML DOcs and Schemas should only take a couple days ramp up time.