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\opt{note}{\skbheading{The Long Story, Part II}}
A solution is to create a unified document repository, then use
this repository as 'normative source' to create documents for specific
purposes while leaving the text blocks, headings, figures, presentations,
references, acronyms and all other reusable 'stuff' in the repository for
the next document which might (hopefully will) benefit from them. This can
(did it for me already) safe a lot of time, demands archiving (of
published documents, thus creating a traceable history), helps to keep
important information updated (without jeopardising any other work) and
prevents losing any 'stuff'.
The repository needs a few rules, a (customisable) structure but beside
that only a bit of effort to be maintained. To give an example: while
writing the first version of this article (May 11, 2009), I have moved 4
lecture notes, 2 presentations, 1 book chapter, 1 book (in writing), 1
textbook (for students, with 4 chapters) and 4 articles from my 'mess'
into my repository. This involved some re-formatting (plus the occasional
re-drawing) to bring the original sources into the target formats. At the
same time I did develop the rules of my repository, the structure and the
(mostly \LaTeX) code (and re-wrote/structured/ruled most of them a few
times). I ended up with 1,314 files in 87 folders, which create 9 articles, 2
books, 1 textbook, 3 lecture notes and this document (note: the number of
articles increased, because I could re-assemble 'stuff' for new uses,
spending some five minutes per one new article). I did remove roughly 100
pages of text (take the classic Spring LNCS format and you get the point
of the number of characters) and some 40 figures (all duplicates). I did
find way too many errors in the original sources (most of which have been
created by 're-using' them earlier from even more-original-sources).
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