Real Time Inter-document Linking?

simon666 · Newbie Joined: 04 Jun 2006 Posts: 3

Hi all.

I did a quick search but didn't find anything on this and was curious if such a feature exists. Essentially what I would like to do is link given (user defined) portions of Document A (docA.odt) to other individual .odt documents: docB.odt, docC.odt, etc, etc.

So Document A would be the 'master' document, and when changes take place to it, the sub-documents (docB.odt, docC.odt, etc, etc.) would reflect those changes; and subsequently if the user defines, changes in the sub-documents would be reflected in the 'master' document.

The real world use of this would be for say writing a story in chapters and you want the entire story in Document A aka 'master', and the individual chapters in seperate documents as well.

Does this exist, and if so how should I taylor my search to find the appropriate howtos etc? If it doesn't, and we're sure I'll submit a feature request bug for it...

Thanks,
simon

simon666 · Newbie Joined: 04 Jun 2006 Posts: 3

if this isn't a feature, i suppose, though i am no programmer, the modifications to master and subdocuments could take place when saving takes place. so the document linking info would be stored in the file, and when a scheduled save, or user initiated save occurs, the linked documents, if not opened, could be written to...

anyways thanks again,
simon

Robert Tucker · Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2006 10:50 am Post subject:

If you started out by saving the individual chapters as individual files you could, in theory at least, import them to a blank "master document" as OLE objects (Insert>Objects>OLE Object...).

You would have to make changes to the individual chapters in the individual files but every time you opened the "master document" it should be able to update to the edited files.

In practice I think it would be difficult or impossible to get it to work with anything as long as a book chapter or indeed anything longer than a page.

simon666 · Newbie Joined: 04 Jun 2006 Posts: 3

yah i was thinking you could set various reference points throughout the document on lines to begin and end a linkage. but yah i dont know the complications of actually programming that...