RE: Workflow

[Daniel Emory <danemory7224@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

--- "Combs, Richard" <richard.combs@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> <shudder />I can't _imagine_ letting multiple
> "reviewers" check out a
> doc for which I'm responsible, make whatever changes
> they want, and check it back in.
===============================================
Gee, why couldn't it be a  saved version (under a
different name) of the version you're responsible for.
If that review copy version gets butchered, it has no
effect on the original version. Comparing the two
versions provides an easy way to identify all reviewer
comments. 
=============================================== 
> Reviewing and writing aren't synonymous. Reviewing
> means to provide feedback. The output of a review 
> process is a set of suggestions, not an
> edited document. 
> 
> What you're describing isn't a review process. 
> 
> It's an authoring by committee process.
=========================================== 
Your comment that reviewing and writing aren't
synonomous ignores the fact that both are part of the
same process, and the ideal way to accomplish that
process is to give reviewers the same authoring power
as writers, provided there's a way to distinguish
comments/markup from the original.

As one who once ran a proposal group, I can attest
that, although is is cumbersome, circulating a paper
copy to reviewers yields the most thorough and
complete comments.

And I disagree that PDF is the ideal medium for
conducting reviews. How, for example, can a reviewer
clearly indicate in a PDF copy that a paragraph,
phrase or sentence should be moved, or clearly
indicate that something inside a graphic needs to be
changed or moved?

Forcing reviewers to use Acrobar severely limits their
ability to pinpoint individual words or phrases, and
denies them capabilities which are often required to
carry out a truly thorough review. The result is that
reviewers who are required to use Acrobat tend to pass
over problems which cannot be easily marked or
corrected using the limited markup capabilities of
Acrobat. 



Dan Emory & Associates
FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
DW Emory <danemory7224@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

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