On 5/25/15 12:25 PM, Neil Gould wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
On 5/25/15 12:29 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Mon, 25 May 2015 00:13:08 -0600, Ken Springer
wrote:

On 5/24/15 2:03 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 23 May 2015 09:48:07 -0600, Ken Springer
wrote:

When I wrote the comment, I was thinking of a situation where a
group of people are collaborating on a project, and need to
create a report, plan, drawings, something as a group, not as
individuals.

Only one person should have control of the document creation. You
preferably or someone writes the original. Create a PDF from the
original, and send it to the other members individually. They
should be instructed to use the annotation feature to send
feedback of what they would like to see changed. *NO* editing of
the original text. That leaves you with the original text to
compare with the changes that individual wants.

You realize, of course, that when you send a document to someone
to solicit their input, you're generally sending a "copy". Most
people wouldn't work on a document, send a copy to a colleague,
delete their local copy, and then hope for the best. ;-)

G Yep. What would usually happen for me was someone would
delete the original text and simply insert their text, leaving me
with nothing to compare.

You always have the original document, so you can use that for
comparisons if someone forgets to use Track Changes. I'm not sure
when Word gained the Compare feature. I didn't use that feature
often, so to me it seems like it's always been there.

I don't know when it got the compare feature, but that's not what I
meant. :-) Don't you just love the English language? LOL

By compare, I meant doing it manually, reading the original first, the
suggested change(s) second. If I have two .doc files, I have to have
both of them open in separate windows, AFAIK. But if it's an
annotated PDF, the original and suggested phrases are displayed in a
single document.

There are programs designed for collaborative authoring that automate the
process and make it very easy to track revisions and versions. FrameMaker is
one that has had that ability since at least version 3, which was before
Adobe bought Frame, Inc. decades ago. Using Word, PDFs and so on for version
tracking is just another way to make life difficult. ;-)

I don't doubt there are programs for that. The question is, is the
program of enough value to you to justify the purchase?

Beside buying it, you have to factor in the following:

- Training of the employees to use and understand it
- Training of management to use and understand it
- Training of sub-contractors and their employees to use it
- Willingness of everyone to use it


There's probably some other things I haven't thought about.

There's going to be a level below which the business is not going to
find the expenditures related to the above list financially advisable.
Maybe they only do this 3 or 4 times a year, and on smaller projects.

The trick is always to find the best way to use the tools you already
have, and arguably, the tools everyone already has.

The negative of your method is all users have to have the same software,
and absorb the same expense. With my way, users can select whatever
software they wish, and only have to be able to create a basic PDF file,
which can be done with a free printer driver in Windows, or natively in
OS X.

My way is possibly easier to accomplish and mix OSes also. G

--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 36.0.4
Thunderbird 31.5
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"