--On Tuesday, 20 June, 2006 12:00 +0200 Iljitsch van Beijnum
<iljitsch(_at_)muada(_dot_)com> wrote:
On 20-jun-2006, at 1:07, Ned Freed wrote:
...
I've tried using change bars and other fancier
tools, but I have
concluded they're more trouble than they're worth.
Then you haven't been doing it right... If you use Word, for
instance (but Open Office has the same functionality) you can
set up "track changes" and "highlight changes when editing"
or words to the same effect, and then you'll see text that's
added in a different color depending on who added it, and you
can reject or accept changes made by others. You can also
easily skip to the next edit. I can't imagine two or more
people working on the same document without this
functionality.
Hmm. With Word, for instance, virtually every correction to
the text results in a huge clutter of change-tracking notes
about format changes and similar drivel. For many documents, it
makes the S/N ratio just miserable.
This matches my (much more limited) experience with OpenOffice.
If there were a "track
substantive textual changes only" option, an "ignore format
changes" one, or some sort of "accept all format, font, and
style changes" command, I'd probably agree with you about
utility. But, given the reality of those systems today, I tend
to agree with Ned, even though I like a feature of those system
that you didn't mention (the ability to insert comments whose
appearance in the output can easily turned on and off. <cref>
and some processing options comes close, but isn't quite the
same).
IMO this is something that needs to be added to xml2rfc. It is very common to
have text of various sorts in drafts that has no business being in the final
RFC, and the current mechanisms for controlling this are a bit primitive.
Consider this a vote for some added functionality in xml2rfc to cover
this case.
My immediate thought in response to all this is "what a
colossal waste of
time". I want to focus on document content, not stylistic
frills and irrelevant
minutiae. That's what the RFC Editors gets the big bucks to
do... I therefore
want a tool that lets me engage in semantic markup with as
little attention
paid to layout issues as possible.
And that's exactly what the style mechanism is for: you can
indicate headings of different levels (= generate numbering
and table of contents automatically), have different kinds of
lists (bulleted, numbered) and so on.
If it worked, that would be how it would work. My own
experience is that it is very hard to get it to work well. To
take a handy example, try to generate a cross reference to a
heading that hasn't been generated with a built-in style in Word
(2000/ XP/ 2003).
It actually sounds like Word is more capable than some other
high end tools in this specific case.
...
That is not my experience. Figures are very hard to get
right, they very often require edits.
It depends on what sort of edits you're talking about. Both
figures and equations move things away from pure semantic
markup and towards presentation specifics. It's unavoidable,
and once you enter the presentation
realm the list of possible tweaks to make things just a
little bit better often seems endless.
I'm talking about stuff like "the text in this box should be A
but it's B" and "there shouldn't be a line between those two
boxes".
But those are precisely the things that, in our environment, one
wants the author to get right and the RFC Editor to not mess
with.
Exactly so.
I will also add that while the temptation is great to use the most powerful
tool available, the most powerful tool is often not the best tool for the job.
When it comes to producing RFCs, xml2rfc plus a competent XML editing tool
(I'm currently using Exchanger XML Editor) is a clear winner in my book.
Ned
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