Re: Editing .pdfs - to do or not to do is the question

[Susan W. Gallagher <sgallagher5 -at- cox -dot- net>]

Any editing policy that does not say "the editor marks
up the document and returns it to the author to make
the changes" is a recipe for disaster.

I once worked with an editor on the other side of the
continent who was in a  hurry to perform the final 
production edit and get a book to the printer. Since there
was a 3-hour time difference, she decided to expedite
matters...

The corporate style guide said not to put stuff you type in
single quotes, so she deleted them. Little did she realize
that the SQL statement the book was instructing the user to
create required those single quotes in order to work. That
was only one of the miriad disasters her ingenuity created.

Making sure that changes made to a pdf are also made to the
source document is tricky enough when one person is making
the changes. Trying to keep the two versions in sync when
two people are making the changes????? You're just looking
for trouble.

My two cents.
-Sue Gallagher
> 
> From: "HSC Italian" <twins398 -at- hotmail -dot- com>

> Our team is under new management and we have a new editor. We are in the 
> process of getting an editing process into place. I've been a writer for 
> well over a decade and in my expience the rule has always been this: 
> "editing the .pdf of a document is not an option". The rule I am accustomed 
> to is that any changes to the document are to done in the source file, ONLY, 
> then a new .pdf is generated from the corrected source file.
> 
> The editing process that is being proposed is this, if a document has 
> changes the editor can make the changes in the .pdf and at the same time the 
> writer can make the changes to the source. Perhaps I'm old school and need 
> to be woken up, if so, PLEASE tell me. This proposed process just seems 
> risky and counterproductive.
> 
> ALL feedback is greatly appreciated.