RE: [docbook] document reviewing ideas

[Norma E Emery <nemery@student.hagerstowncc.edu>]

Mats,

I run a PDF, enabled for commenting, and post the PDF in a central location where reviewers can take turns accessing the file and annotating it. We are also working on a feedback link for HTML output, but are not there yet. I then make the changes in the XML.

You say your "internal "customers" are used to reviewing with a wysiwyg tool (namely, Word) so they can markup and
comment inline." 

I think this means that they like a "track changes" capability. If that is the case, what is it exactly that they like about this approach? Do they want the ability to, for example, Accept changes so that they can see how the revisions will look? It would be helpful to know why they like this method and what they want to achieve to determine the best solution.

Regards,

Norma Emery




________________________________________
From: Mats Wichmann <mats@wichmann.us>
Sent: Thursday, January 2, 2014 3:57 PM
To: docbook@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [docbook] document reviewing ideas

A little backstory here...

I inherited a specification document that was written in MS-Word.
Although not my preferred format, existing institutional familiarity
meant I didn't initially have the option to change.  However, when the
project evolved and it became clear I'd have to produce a half dozen or
more variants of the document, while maintaining large chunks of the
content as common text, I went ahead and did the conversion to docbook
to maintain some semblance of my sanity.

The problem I now have is my existing internal "customers" are used to
reviewing with a wysiwyg tool (namely, Word) so they can markup and
comment inline. Turns out I haven't had luck generating stuff Word can
read directly, but it comes out at least acceptably if you feed it html.
 However... it doesn't seem ideal to convert to another format for
reviewing, then have to "backport" things to the master. This might be a
case for the roundtripping stuff (dbk2wordml) but I can't get a usable
doc out of that at all.

So... asking for advice.  What do people typically do when it's time to
pass a document around to multiple reviewers?  I'm not convinced
something like Word is the best answer even there (you end up having to
review serially, not in parallel, or you'll go nuts reconciling the
comments in multiple different docs, but it's certainly comfortably
familiar to folks whose companies run on MS-Office).  Is there a "better
way" that ties in well with having sources in docbook?

-- mats

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