Review Process for documents in HTML? (Take II)

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Scott notes: <<I have only anecdotal evidence...>>

Which is every bit as good as my anecdotal evidence... possibly  
better. Just saying... <g>

<<... but I would argue that with the Show Comments feature you can  
track the comments/edits/ whatever entered by someone and check them  
off if action is completed, place a status on them such as Review:  
None, Accepted, Rejected, Cancelled, Completed. You can use the same  
PDF to circulate through all SME's by email, or from a central  
location, or individual one, and combine their comments into a central  
copy of the PDF.>>

That would certainly work, but it still requires care when responding  
to each comment, and someone must remember to check at the end of the  
process that all comments have been satisfactorily responded to. It  
can be done, but whoever does this must remember to check carefully;  
the temptation to simply assume that all has been done is natural,  
particularly under deadline pressure. Ideally, your editor can do  
this, since we editors tend to be... umm... obsessive about these  
things. If you're doing peer reviews only, pick the most obsessive  
person to do this work. It really does make a difference.

I should also qualify my previous comment about the usefulness of PDF  
for reviewing documents: I was speaking from the editor's perspective,  
which I may not have made sufficiently clear. If SMEs are focusing  
primarily on technical details, and not fiddling with the wording,  
then PDFs can work very well. Where PDFs work far less well is for  
significant amounts of copyediting and substantive editing; then, the  
process becomes significantly more cumbersome (less efficient and  
productive) than using a word processor. But you could solve that  
problem by giving your editor(s) access to a copy of Frame so you can  
use revision tracking, macros, search and replace, etc. to make  
editing more efficient.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Geoff Hart (www.geoff-hart.com)
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Effective Onscreen Editing:
http://www.geoff-hart.com/books/eoe/onscreen-book.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------------

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