Re: Workflow

[James Eric Lawson <cire@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've used many different sorts of workflow for document authoring and 
review, with varying degrees of success, and for varying objectives.  The 
ideal workflow, supposing it exists, is not definable without reference to 
the particular case, and thus varies not only with the context but with the 
individual document authored or reviewed, not to mention varying with the 
individual authors or reviewers involved.

As an example, I recently dealt with a scientific MS (originally composed 
in FM, then butchered into MS Word) returned in PDF after copyediting.  The 
copyeditors' (there were several) questions were included as marginalia in 
the PDF.

Using Acrobat 7.0 to make the final proofing changes, as well as 
emendations based on authorial indecisions and answers to the copyeditors' 
questions, went very well indeed, and I was delighted to have the tool, but 
I did encounter both of the specific problems mentioned by Dan Emory.  For 
the first (clearly indicating movement of text), it was trivial and usual, 
however, to mark the deletion where the deletion occurred and the insertion 
where it occurred (this is the norm for indicating text movement to 
typesetters).  For the second specific problem mentioned by Dan (clearly 
indicating alterations in graphics), however, the solution was not so 
straightforward, perhaps because I was not sufficiently familiar with the 
Acrobat graphics emendation tools mentioned by Amanda.  As it happened, I 
revised the original graphic and attached the revised graphic to the 
PDF--which failed, because the typesetters (aka in this case publishers) 
were unable to retrieve the newly attached graphic.  I had to resend the 
graphic separately.  Revising and resending (or reattaching) the graphic 
would not have been feasible, however, without access to the original and 
familiarity with the tools used for its creation.

A subset of the difficulty with the graphics, however, is not something 
that could readily be resolved with the graphics annotation tools mentioned 
by Amanda (even supposing I were sufficiently familiar with them): that 
subset of the difficulty concerns equation emendations, which are difficult 
to communicate precisely without the ability to redo and reattach the 
graphical rendition of the equation.  The usual case in a paper workflow 
would be to handwrite the revised equation in the margin; communicating the 
specifics of an equation without using a graphical rendition similar to the 
original can involve convoluted and opaque linguistic constructions that 
presuppose mathematical expertise, and can easily fail even when those 
preconditions are met: e.g, "use italic roman capital R with a subscript 
italic lowercase i stacked below a roman lowercase o followed by a dabba, 
with the whole construction used as the divisor of ..." and etc.

James Eric Lawson <cire@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Senior Computer Specialist, Research Publications Editor
University of Washington, Box 357962, Seattle WA  USA  98195
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.  -- Gustave Flaubert

** To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx **
** with "unsubscribe framers" (no quotes) in the body.   **