<div id="popup_box_thanks" style="display:none" onClick="close_popup_thanks('popup_box_thanks', 'ts')"><br>Thanks for submitting your tip! All submissions are moderated by an editor before appearing online. We've reset the form so you can enter another tip. Or you can close the tip submission box. <div class="x_close" id="thanks_upper_right"><a href="javascript:void(0)" onmousedown="close_popup_thanks('popup_box_thanks', 'ts'); return true;">Close</a></div></div>
<div class="tbf_row"><div class="tbf_wide_extra_top not_bold">Please submit only technical tips that will help other TidBITS readers better use their Macs, iPhones, and related software and hardware. All product announcements should be sent to <a href="mailto:releases@tidbits.com">releases@tidbits.com</a>.</div></div>
<div class="tbf_left">URL</div><div class="tbf_right"><input type="text" value="" name="tip_link_url" tabindex="3"><span class="tip_description"><br>Enter the URL to a Web page that supports your tip.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<div class="tbf_row">
<div class="tbf_left">Linked text</div><div class="tbf_right"><input type="text" value="" name="tip_link_label" tabindex="4"><span class="tip_description"><br>Enter the name of the page linked above.</span></div>
<div class="tbf_wide"><input type="submit" value="Preview Your Tip" name="preview_tip" onClick="fill_preview('tipbits_enclosure_preview', 'ts', this.form); return false;" tabindex="7"> <input type="submit" value="Send Us Your Tip!" name="submit_this_tip" onClick="handle_tip_submission('ts', '', this.form, 'tip'); return false;" tabindex="8"></div>
</div>
<div class="spacer"></div>
<div class="tbf_row">
<div class="tbf_wide"><span class="fine_print">When you submit a tip, you give us permission to use it. Read <a href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="generic_show_hide('tip_terms')">our terms</a> for more details. All submissions are reviewed before publication.</span></div>
<div class="tbf_wide"><span class="fine_print">Our terms: By submitting a tip, you agree to assign TidBITS Publishing Inc., a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual license to reproduce, publish, and distribute your tip in connection with the TidBITS Web site and associated products in any media. You agree that you created the content you submitted, and that you have the right to assign us this license. You give us permission to use your name, but your email address won't be publicly displayed or shared. We review all submissions before publication, and reserve the right to select which submissions we feel are appropriate for our readers and to edit those we publish.</span></div>
<div id="comment_thanks" style="display:none" onClick="close_popup_thanks('comment_thanks', 'comm')"><br>Thanks for submitting a comment! Please check your email for a link that, when clicked, will verify that you're a real person and cause your comment to appear immediately. <div class="x_close" id="comment_upper_right"><a href="javascript:void(0)" onmousedown="close_popup_thanks('comment_thanks', 'comm'); return true;">Close</a></div></div>
<div class="tbf_wide"><span class="fine_print">Our terms: We reserve the right to edit or delete any comment, so please post thoughtfully. We use your email address <i>only</i> to send you a one-time verification message confirming that you posted this comment. We also store your address to allow you to verify using other Web browsers in the future. For more info, see our <a href="http://db.tidbits.com/privacy.html">privacy policy</a>.</span></div>
<li><a href="/feeds/tidbits.rss" title="Subscribe via RSS" class="gettb">RSS <img src="/images/feed-icon-12x12.gif" width="12" height="12" border="0" class="nav_img" alt="Subscribe via RSS"></a></li>
<li><a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=276986548" title="Subscribe to the podcast" class="gettb">Podcast <img src="/images/feed-icon-12x12_podcast.gif" width="12" height="12" border="0" class="nav_img" alt="Subscribe to the postcast"></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.twitter.com/TidBITS" title="Get Article Updates via Twitter" class="gettb">Twitter <img src="/images/feed_icon_12x12_twitter.png" width="12" height="12" border="0" class="nav_img" alt="Get Article Updates via Twitter"></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/TidBITS/195314925519" title="Go to the TidBITS Page at Facebook" class="gettb">Facebook <img src="/images/feed_icon_12x12_facebook.gif" width="12" height="12" border="0" class="nav_img" alt="Go to the TidBITS Page at Facebook"></a></li>
<li><a href="javascript:void(0)" title="Sections" class="tabhead" onClick="return showhide('articleslist')">Sections <span id="articleslist_triangle"><img src="/images/nav_triangle_open.gif" width="9" height="9" border="0" class="navtriangle" id="articleslist_tri_image" alt="Click to show or hide the contents of this section."></span></a></li>
<li><a href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="return showhide('stafflist')" title="Staff" class="tabhead">Staff <span id="stafflist_triangle"><img src="/images/nav_triangle_closed.gif" width="9" height="9" border="0" class="navtriangle" id="stafflist_tri_image" alt="Click to show or hide the contents of this section."></span></a></li>
<li><a href="javascript:void(0)" title="Issues" class="tabhead" onClick="return showhide('issuelist')">Weekly Issues <span id="issuelist_triangle"><img src="/images/nav_triangle_closed.gif" width="9" height="9" border="0" class="navtriangle" id="issuelist_tri_image" alt="Click to show or hide the contents of this section."></span></a></li>
<li><a href="javascript:void(0)" onClick="return showhide('abouttidbits')" title="About TidBITS" class="tabhead">About TidBITS <span id="abouttidbits_triangle"><img src="/images/nav_triangle_closed.gif" width="9" height="9" border="0" class="navtriangle" id="abouttidbits_tri_image" alt="Click to show or hide the contents of this section."></span></a></li>
<div class="center_top">Thoughtful, detailed coverage of the Mac, iPhone, and iPad, plus the best-selling <a href="http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/?pt=TB-TAGLINE" style="color:yellow">Take Control</a> ebooks.</div>
<!-- begin centercolumn -->
<div id="centercolumn">
<!-- begin rightcolumn_container -->
<div id="rightcolumn_container">
<!-- begin rightcolumn -->
<!-- rightcolumn is embedded within centercolumn so featured text wraps around it -->
</div><!-- end tearoffbox_wide_container for watchlist items -->
<!-- begin tearoff box wide -->
<div class="tearoffbox_wide_container">
<div class="tearoffbox_wide_tips">
<div class="tip_display">
<div class="tips_sponsor_logo">
</div>
<h6>Quickly Navigate Up in the Finder</h6>
<p><p>If you're in a Finder window and want to navigate up a level in the folder hierarchy beyond the currently selected level, simply press Command-Up arrow. (You can also Command-click the Finder window's title to pop up a menu of higher levels.)</p></p>
</div>
<div class="tearoffbox_wide_bottom_tips">
<div style="padding-bottom:35px"><div class="tip_display" style="float:left"><p><br><a href="/tipbits/73">Link to this tip</a></p></div><div class="tip_display" style="float:right; width:150px">
<div class="tbf_wide_80" id="hc_rc_4975">To help us avoid automated posts and misuse of our site, please enter the words below.</div><div class="x_close_row" id="hc_upper_right2_4975"><a href="javascript:void(0)" onmousedown="HidePopupContent('hc_4975', 'hc', '4975'); return true;">Close</a></div>
<div class="featured_meta"><div class="meta_article">12 Mar 2001 | <a href="/article/6349?print_version=1">Print <span class="shift_up"><img src="/images/printer_icon.gif" alt="Printer-Friendly Version of This Article" border="0" width="9" height="10"></span></a></div></div>
<H2>Come Together: Document Collaboration, Part 2</H2>
<div id="article_box_4975"><P>Last week I looked at some of the variables involved with creating document collaboration systems, and walked through the process that we use with TidBITS. This week I'm going to look at several systems I've used personally. Discussions in TidBITS Talk have also introduced some tools with which I have no experience, so make sure to check out that hot topic for a more complete picture.</P><P><<A HREF="http://db.tidbits.com/article/06327">http://db.tidbits.com/article/06327</A>><BR><<A HREF="http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=1312">http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=1312</A>></P><P><STRONG>Hit the Books</STRONG> -- I've written books for a number of different publishers, and with one exception, they've used similar collaboration processes. In most cases, I'm a lone author working with one or two editors, which means sending chapters back and forth via email is all that's necessary. Sometimes publishers like to have draft chapters submitted via FTP, but that's proven more trouble than it's worth.</P><P>In each case, the publishers dictated using Microsoft Word as the document format. Although I wrote my first two books in Nisus Writer and exported to Word when I had to send them in, I've stuck with Word since. I far prefer writing in Nisus Writer, but the pain of exporting, importing, and massaging the text - often multiple times per chapter - overwhelmed my preferences.</P><P>Before Word 6, major changes to the text were marked with simple colors (never character styles, which could slip through to layout), but since then each project has relied on Word's revision tracking with mixed results. It's nice, particularly with multiple editors, to identify who made which changes when, but documents with revision tracking become messy quickly. You can hide some visual clutter by setting the style of deleted text to be Hidden rather than Strikethrough. Even still it's easy to cause confusion around paragraph breaks when adding and deleting text while using revision tracking, particularly when paragraph styles change at those points in the document. Plus, although Microsoft tries to make it easy to accept or reject changes, it's so much work to address a large number of changes in a book-length document that you tend to accept them all and move on.</P><P>Conventions for comments have also been similar between projects, with comments appearing on lines by themselves after the paragraph in question, usually in a special Comment paragraph style to differentiate them from the text. With multiple editors or reviewers, convention called for everyone to sign comments with initials. That approach has worked so well that even after the appearance of Word's comment features, I've never been asked to use them while writing a book. I suspect they're too unwieldy for serious use: - the yellow comment pop-ups are annoying, the comment pane is awkward and uses too-small text by default (and in Word 2001 on the Mac, the comment pane's Close button improperly requires two clicks to activate). Also, since Word insists comments be attached to at least one word, people tend to select lots of text for the comment, thus making large sections of a heavily commented document a bright yellow.</P><P>My Eudora Visual QuickStart Guide was an exception to the process above. It has relatively little text, many screenshots and captions, and a specific layout, all of which combined to make me do the writing and layout directly in QuarkXPress. Since QuarkXPress 3.3 lacks a good built-in way to make comments in files, I sent the files to my editor, who printed them out, marked them up with a red pencil, and sent them back via UPS. It sounds crude, but because so many comments related to layout (kerning, alignment, and so on), on-screen proofing probably would have been less accurate and more work.</P><P><STRONG>Magazine & Web Writing</STRONG> -- Magazine and Web writing is similar to books in terms of the number of editors (one or two at most) and the methods of exchanging files (always email). Magazines also rely primarily on Word for their document format, although Web publications often prefer either straight text in the body of an email message or HTML.</P><P>With most periodicals, comments are relatively minimal because the articles and the deadlines are short. A longer piece for a monthly magazine is more likely to undergo significant editing and require multiple passes by different editors. One such publication had some conventions that had apparently evolved organically, since they had the right idea, but didn't go far enough. Changes either weren't marked at all, were marked in blue, or were handled via Word's revision tracking. Either of the last two would have worked fine, but the editors often weren't consistent, which writers found confusing.</P><P>Similarly, although some editors put their comments at the end of paragraphs, others inserted them right in the middle of the text. A few long comments inside a paragraph made it easy to lose track of the actual text. As with the book editors, no magazine editors I've worked with have ever used Word's comment feature. Some other situations I've experienced have been quite different, however.</P><P><STRONG>Legal Documents</STRONG> -- When I helped start the XNS Public Trust Organization, the other directors and I worked on a number of long, complex documents - things like our charter, the XNS Global Terms, and various legal agreements. Although there were only four board members and our lawyer, we didn't have an author/editor situation, a centralized server, or reviewers who were publishing professionals.</P><P><<A HREF="http://db.tidbits.com/article/06133">http://db.tidbits.com/article/06133</A>></P><P>The approach we used was to email Word documents around. Because of busy schedules, we were able to use a round-robin approach, so each of us was able to see the previous comments with the exception of our lawyer, who worked in parallel with the rest of us. (I tried to use Word's Compare Documents and Merge Documents features to merge his comments and changes with a complete lack of success.) We used revision tracking somewhat, but since we were mostly reviewing and discussing these documents, relatively few changes were necessary. However, we ended up using Word's comment feature heavily (about 100 comments over 2 documents), and although it worked acceptably, I found it clumsy for heavy use.</P><P>An unusual situation occurred when we had to finalize the XNS Global Terms just before launch. Delays meant we were working under a tight, one-day deadline, and we had about ten people involved, half of whom were lawyers. Initially we tried assigning the documents to a single person and hashing through remaining issues in a conference call, but that proved impractical. One of the lawyers recommended taking it back to email but keeping one person in charge of each document. Since the original documents were in Word, we kept them there, even though our eventual goal was to hand them off for conversion to HTML that evening. Plus, even though we were using a variety of Macs and PCs, everyone had a recent version of Word.</P><P>Word's revision tracking worked extremely well in this case, since it marked clearly what had been changed. We had no copy editors waiting at the end, so it was important to make sure that even small changes were marked. We used Word's comment features occasionally when remarking on something in the text that only the document owner needed to see, but we kept most of the commentary in the email messages used to carry the attached documents around. That let the discussion run fast and free (I set Eudora to check mail every minute) without forcing everyone to open and scan through each document. Putting comments between paragraphs, as I've done in most other projects, didn't happen, in part because people were afraid to add text to the document that might prove confusing to strip out later, and in part because we didn't have time to agree on comment conventions.</P><P>One lesson I've learned from these experiences is that the utility of Word documents is significantly hampered by having lots of user-defined styles in the document. Without a fair amount of care, not to mention knowledge of how Word styles work, a Word document rife with styles is a copy editing minefield just waiting for reviewers to walk through. The documents from these collaborations were fine in terms of content, but an utter mess otherwise. Some paragraphs were in the wrong styles, others appeared correct but had in fact been "fixed" manually, and almost anything Word did automatically (like numbered lists - a major portion of legal documents) was almost certain to be screwed up. Cleaning up the documents was easier than reformatting from scratch, but not much.</P><P><STRONG>Simple Document Collaboration System</STRONG> -- To distill my experiences with the processes above and from the TidBITS system I described last week, here are six pieces of advice for creating a successful document collaboration system that revolves around files intended for some form of publication, be it a group term paper, team report, magazine article, or technical book.</P><UL><LI><P>Settle on a format before starting. In all likelihood, it will be Microsoft Word, but if you choose something else, make sure everyone has software that can open and edit the files. Pay special attention to cross-platform issues. Relying on other programs to import and export is often a significant obstacle.</P><LI><P>Test your distribution mechanism before relying on it at deadline. Email attachments generally work well these days, but a test can save major headaches. See our series of articles explaining email attachments for assistance.</P></UL><P><<A HREF="http://db.tidbits.com/series/1159">http://db.tidbits.com/series/1159</A>></P><UL><LI><P>Agree on basic conventions for marking changes. Use either colors or Word's revision tracking to mark changes, or if your editing environment has no color capabilities, some sort of intratextual markup (but be sure to remove it at the end). Mark changes when they're at all major. With Word's revision tracking, it's often best to have Word hide deletions to make the document easier to read.</P><LI><P>Agree on how comments will be made, either by putting them between paragraphs (in a different user-defined style or with some prefixed characters) or by using Word's comment feature. If you're using Word, make sure everyone enters their initials in the User Information tab of the Preferences so comments are identified, and if not, make sure everyone signs their comments.</P><LI><P>Encourage consistency and adherence to agreed-upon rules. This is primarily important when multiple people are making roughly equal contributions to documents with lots of formatting. In situations where you just want comments or are working with minimally formatted documents, it's easier to let reviewers work however they want and integrate comments manually.</P><LI><P>Make sure you know who will be responsible for assembling the final document, which will involve integration of comments, approving changes, removing all markup and comments, and general copy editing and document cleanup.</P></UL><P><STRONG>Going Online</STRONG> -- All of these systems discussed above used the Internet purely as a transport mechanism. In the next installment, I'll look at several services that offer collaboration environments via the Web with no need for special software or plug-ins of any sort.</P><!-- Come Together: Document Collaboration, Part 2 Adam C. Engst --></div>
<!-- end article text -->
<!-- PayBITS -->
<p> </p><div class="sponsorbox">
<div class="sponsortext"><A HREF="http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/contributors.html"><IMG SRC="http://db.tidbits.com/images/badges/tb-house-ad.gif" ALT="" HEIGHT="50" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0" ALIGN="left"></A>READERS LIKE YOU! Support TidBITS with a contribution today!<BR /><<a href="http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/contributors.html">http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/contributors.html</a>><BR />Special thanks this week to John & Nichola Collins, Chris Williams,<BR />John K. Lilley, and Honeymoons By Sunset for their generous support!
