Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!haven!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Change bars in TeX/LaTeX?
Message-ID: <19145@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 18 Aug 89 17:56:19 GMT
References: <33900004@zaphod>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 21

In article <33900004@zaphod> doug@zaphod.prime.com writes:
>I'm wondering if someone has a good general change bar mechanism for
>TeX.  I wrote a simple one which works on a paragraph at a time
>granularity (which is easy since the paragraph is a vbox and you can
>combine it with a rule mark and a label trivially) but doing a better one
>looks very hairy.  Already done?  

There is a fancy changebar style in the Clarkson archives, but it uses
ln03-specific `\special's to draw the bars.  If we ever get a standard
for \special, this style might become more useful.

On the other hand, I have never understood why people like changebars.
(They do point out which lines have changed.  So would inline markup.
The only advantage to changebars is that they can be masked away when
the document is photocopied; but when the document is typeset
electronically, inline markup could be deleted easily.  Moreover, the
inline markup would show which *words* have changed, rather than which
lines, and could include the old wording as well.)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris