Identifying the locations of errata/corrigenda changes

[Dennis E. Hamilton]

Frances, you got me thinking further about this.  

I wonder if the "replace 'x' with 'y'" approach could be simplified, even
improved somewhat, in many cases by using revision marking, showing how to
start with 'x' and transform it to 'y' by strike-outs for the removals and
underscores beneath the insertions.  It appears that we have the technology.

Conveying such changes in plaintext would take some additional conventions,
as when discussing a change in an e-mail or as part of a JIRA issue.  We
already have similar needs to show font changes, emphasis, and so on when
using plaintext.  There are a variety of conventions available for it
showing such features in plaintext.  (Something like wikiMarkup would work
and tends to avoid creating something with angle brackets that is confusing
for some list-archive servers and for mechanical transformation to HTML.)

On first blush, it seems to me that we have the technology.  As we've just
seen here, PDF can carry such formatting without serious difficulty.

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: sc34wg6-bounces at vse.cz [mailto:sc34wg6-bounces at vse.cz] On Behalf Of
Francis Cave
http://mailman.vse.cz/pipermail/sc34wg6/2010-January/000011.html
Sent: Sunday, January 10, 2010 14:34
To: sc34wg6 at vse.cz
Subject: RE: Identifying the locations of errata/corrigenda changes
[ ... ]

Unambiguous location of a correction is obviously the key, and I find that
often it is the original text that provides the most effective locator. I
have tended to find that "replace 'x' with 'y'" works as effectively as
anything, even for quite large chunks of text 'x' and 'y'. So much more
effective than the likes of "insert following the fifth word of the second
line of the third paragraph...". The drawback, of course, is that quoting
possibly large chunks of text makes the whole Corrigendum / Errata document
much longer.

[ ... ]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sc34wg6-bounces at vse.cz [mailto:sc34wg6-bounces at vse.cz] On Behalf
> Of Dennis E. Hamilton
http://mailman.vse.cz/pipermail/sc34wg6/2010-January/000010.html
> Sent: 10 January 2010 21:00
> To: sc34wg6 at vse.cz
> Subject: RE: Identifying the locations of errata/corrigenda changes
> 
> I concur that the critical requirement is sufficient location
> information so
> that the passage subject to any erratum/corrigendum change is
> unambigously
> and *confidently* located.
> 
> It is therefore extremely valuable to establish sufficient context that
> location of the "before" and the "after" are unequivocal and easy to
> place.
> If the context is a bit excessive or redundant, that can be very
> valuable in
> ensuring that the correction item is not itself in error, incorrectly
> stated, or too easily misapplied.
[ ... ]