Someone please fix text-editing software(wrst.ca)
wrst.ca
Someone please fix text-editing software
http://wrst.ca/?p=412
4 comments
As a technical writer, I completely agree with you.
I also wonder if the author knows that you can modify the way track changes shows different types of changes (it sounds like she has everything in balloons, which could indeed be a nightmare with enough changes).
Something like GitHub for documents could potentially solve the collaboration issues, but I couldn't see myself replacing Word anytime soon. Word's formatting capabilities are unparalleled, track changes works well enough for my purposes (and better than anything else I've tried), and the cost and time spent implementing a new solution and training all of my coworkers would be too great.
I also wonder if the author knows that you can modify the way track changes shows different types of changes (it sounds like she has everything in balloons, which could indeed be a nightmare with enough changes).
Something like GitHub for documents could potentially solve the collaboration issues, but I couldn't see myself replacing Word anytime soon. Word's formatting capabilities are unparalleled, track changes works well enough for my purposes (and better than anything else I've tried), and the cost and time spent implementing a new solution and training all of my coworkers would be too great.
>the deletions and insertions in track are just as visually simple as on paper
This really is an aesthetic claim you're making, and it goes against what many in publishing feel, which is that substantial edits through track changes are clearly more taxing, less comfortable, less intuitive and uglier than paper.
You're also confusing collaboration problems with editorial workflow problems. The author is writing from a copy editor's standpoint, which involves producing clean, professional quality copy through a vertical, step-by-step editorial process.
This really is an aesthetic claim you're making, and it goes against what many in publishing feel, which is that substantial edits through track changes are clearly more taxing, less comfortable, less intuitive and uglier than paper.
You're also confusing collaboration problems with editorial workflow problems. The author is writing from a copy editor's standpoint, which involves producing clean, professional quality copy through a vertical, step-by-step editorial process.
Outside of the professional writing industry, Track Changes is a blessing. Funny how he complains about Track Changes. When I show new users the Track Changes functionality in word they get giddy with excitement. It's not perfect, but it's a hundred times better than what I usually expect from a stakeholder "hey, I sent back your Word document with some changes. What? No I don't remember what page I made them on."
> hey, I sent back your Word document with some changes. What? No I don't remember what page I made them on."
Compare and merge even let you pretend everyone you know neatly tracks their changes, whether you've told them about it yet or not.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306484
Compare and merge even let you pretend everyone you know neatly tracks their changes, whether you've told them about it yet or not.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306484
... wait, you can do that? Awesome!
I think people who use certain software full-time and in a professional setting experience it in a completely different way than people who use it only occasionally. Few people outside of publishing seem to spend truly long stretches of time in Word.
How much is she or her peers willing to pay? How much do the existing tools she mentioned cost?
How does the hard copy method handle multiple editors/reviewers?
How does the hard copy method handle multiple editors/reviewers?
I'm really interested in this project: a request from a particular industry to provide a valuable, bespoke product. I'm ready and willing to work on something like that.
But the above questions are important.
"Track Changes" is included with Microsoft Office (so we compete with free). Printing on paper is also free.
A worse problem: the article is not clear enough about what editors would actually value.
Dear Karina Palmitesta: Commission someone to build exactly what you want, get your staff to test it and provide relevant feedback. You should expect to pay for this. If you believe you can sell this to your peers, negotiate a profit-sharing agreement. You should still expect to pay for this.
But the above questions are important.
"Track Changes" is included with Microsoft Office (so we compete with free). Printing on paper is also free.
A worse problem: the article is not clear enough about what editors would actually value.
Dear Karina Palmitesta: Commission someone to build exactly what you want, get your staff to test it and provide relevant feedback. You should expect to pay for this. If you believe you can sell this to your peers, negotiate a profit-sharing agreement. You should still expect to pay for this.
The existing (annoying) tools she mentioned seem to be simply Word and printing things out on paper.
Seems like a shoe in for an editor with git as a backend, and cute, inline diff visualization. Seems not terribly difficult to get an MVP out?
Sounds like you just described https://draftin.com/
I've run into this problem before, in a different field:
Everybody uses Word. Unless you can get your "inline diff visualization" to support Word documents, it's not going to work.
Everybody uses Word. Unless you can get your "inline diff visualization" to support Word documents, it's not going to work.
That would probably makes things more difficult to MVP, but it seems doable to create a plugin for Word that's kind of pretty, and handles edits, editors, drafts, etc through git (maybe even distributed, although local would work fine).
Comparing apples to apples, the deletions and insertions in track are just as visually simple as on paper. The article's suggestion of more in-lining, if applied to comments on content from multiple editors, would be a nightmare. You wouldn't be able to fit some sentences on the screen; they'd be crowded out by all the interruptions.
The article also complains that small punctuation changes can become tedious. That's also true in either form, and the solution is probably organizational. You can reserve a punctuation (and S/V agreement, spacing, etc.) pass for right before publication, or just have a standing agreement that minor cleanup needn't go in track (just accept those yourself as you insert them).
I feel like the most significant failing of track isn't when comparing it to paper. If you're widely circulating a doc for comments, merging edits from a dozen commenters is its own special form of hell. That's true on paper, too, but not in editors that allow real time collaboration, like Google Docs. (That's admittedly a tradeoff, depends on how much you want a single individual acting as gatekeeper for all changes.)