Re: problems with having FM6.0 and FM7.0 concurrently?

[Barbara White <bjw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I sent this to someone else who responded, saying virtually 
the same thing about the Save As commands available in FM7.0.  
I'll post it here too...

In theory, I agree with you about the backwards save-as commands. 
I've used them lots with Word (mostly) on my own files--files 
that I author and maintain by myself. However, I've worked with 
documents and authors for a long, long time (>20 years) and know 
that it's best--if only for their peace of mind--to stay with one 
version of FM (or Word or whatever) in the developmental stages of 
a document that has >1 person on the development team.

I remember working with someone who had one version of Word and 
I had a newer one. There were lots of problems with the documents 
because of the way they was assembled in the first place. Additionally, 
none of the people involved in these documents really knew Word and 
so you'd get 100-page documents that looked great but that used only 
one Word Style--Normal. Plus, these were the types of Word documents 
that stood a good chance of breaking or becoming corrupt every other 
time you'd open them. There were very predictable (and fixable) 
problems with the documents, but the people involved didn't want to 
fix these problems--they sort of worked around them or fixed them 
manually each time they came across them. And as more people got 
involved in the documents, more problems were introduced. However, 
no one really understood the cause of the problems...every time 
someone would uncover a new problem (or previously undetected one) 
they were quick to blame the problem on the fact that two versions 
of Word were being used to manage the suite of documents.

I've seen this happen with FM documents also.  Sometimes, people 
build an FM document that works (it displays and prints correctly), 
but it's extremely fragile. REALLY fragile--fragile enough that if 
you come along and do the "right" thing (e.g., importing formats 
to update paragraph tags or variable names), the entire document 
breaks. These files are filled with problems that are just waiting 
to happen/be discovered and I have a feeling that it would be easy 
to blame these problems on the fact that we are using two versions 
of FM on one file.  (By the way, I hate to work in these types of 
documents. When I do, though, before I do anything on them, I always 
do an assessment first and provide a report to the authors or anyone 
involved in the document.  That way, they know what's happening with 
their file/s and maybe understand why it takes so long to develop/manage 
the file/s. I also do it in the hopes of inspiring them to do things 
differently the next time.)

Anyway, after having done this for too long :-) I've learned that 
it's a lot easier to avoid using multiple versions of a tool on one 
file. (As I said, I do this whenever I am the only person involved 
in the document, but I don't do it when others are involved.)

Thanks.
Barbara


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