Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!amdahl!oliveb!felix!kehr
From: kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Diff marks on Mac documents
Message-ID: <83374@felix.UUCP>
Date: 13 Feb 89 21:03:59 GMT
References: <578@iex.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@felix.UUCP
Reply-To: kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr)
Organization: FileNet Corp., Costa Mesa, CA
Lines: 29

In article <578@iex.UUCP> cramer@iex.UUCP (Bill Cramer) writes:
<We have recently converted our technical documentation platform from 
<Unix (vi/nroff) to the Mac (Word/Canvas).  In the course of preparing 
<most documents, we go through a write->review->change cycle.  On Unix 
<we made use of a filter called 'diffmk' which compared two documents 
<and added change marks as it created a third version. (Change marks 
<are the vertical bars which indicate lines where the two documents 
<differ.)
<
<Is there such a beast available for the Mac?  
 
Do you really want to mark every change? If a writer corrects a spelling,
do you want to call it to the attention of the reader? Rather than
blindly change bar every line that changed (including those that you
changed back the way they were), I prefer to use some discretion in
applying change bars.

True, the writer needs to remember to do it, but after all, that's part
of the job.

If you're using Word, you can use the bar format, but it applies to the
entire paragraph. It's not the way we used to do change bars, but the
only thing we can do with Word. 

I know this doesn't answer your question, but I wanted to point out that
it may not be necessary to change bar individual lines (often the reader
can hardly tell which line they belong to).

Shirley Kehr