djw@lanl.ARPA (02/26/85)
I proofread many of our articles for the "C-Division News" by stealing an online copy of the article, fixing it with my favorite editor, then mailing the thing back to the author. People so far have been astounded that anyone "cares" enough to read the articles before publication that they have accepted the changes they liked and gone on about their business. However; I finally did this to someone who didn't care about what I was doing. He may even have felt just the tiniest bit of resentment. And furthermore, he couldn't easily see my changes. How do you people who do these things do them? I was a writer/editor for ~7-8 years, so I'm reasonably good at it, but I don't feel that marking up a paper copy is productive. I type well and am quite capable of fixing these articles to improve their readability, so what tools do you use if both copies look like disk files? I suggested that he "diff" the files and check the results but he said that that doesn't give him a feel for the context; and besides, that's too much trouble... If I had just given him a paper copy marked up as other people do (assuming he had gotten any other comments) he would have known what to do with it. I suggested that he print the one I "mailed" him and do whatever he wanted to with it. :<)* These articles are less than 300 words long, so I felt that his objections were directed more at my temerity than my style; but, what tools are available on a plain vanilla UNIX(tm) system? Avoiding the issue has never been my style. But if I am truly making his work inordinately hard, then I am wrong. What else could I have done? Thanks in advance. David Wade Los Alamos National Laboratories Consulting Office
laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (03/02/85)
The person whose work you proofread may be uninterested in your help. I guarantee that if you had an account on utzoo and started proofreading ~laura/mem/fiction and ~laura/mem/poetry you would get a very hostile reaction from me -- especially since they are not publicly readable. If I am writing anything that is not code I have to revise it on paper and then put the changes into my text. Proofreading is simply something that I do with a pen in one hand. If the pen isn't there, I read for pleasure rather than critically, which is not the idea. (It works in reverse, as well -- if I have a pen in my hand I mark up the fiction I am reading...). Such habits are hard to break. It took me years before I could type my first draft at all -- before then I had to write the first draft in longhand. I know people who can type the first draft, but only on a typewriter -- a terminal doesn't feel the same and the words don't come. There is lots about writing which nobody, even writers themselves, understand. Laura Creighton utzoo!laura
trb@masscomp.UUCP (Andy Tannenbaum) (03/08/85)
In article <22428@lanl.ARPA> djw@lanl.ARPA writes: > I suggested that he "diff" the files and check the > results but he said that that doesn't give him a feel for the context; > and besides, that's too much trouble... > what tools are > available on a plain vanilla UNIX(tm) system? Avoiding the issue has > never been my style. But if I am truly making his work inordinately > hard, then I am wrong. What else could I have done? If you call Sys III or SysVr2 a vanilla system, then sdiff might be the answer to your troubles. It diffs two files side by side on the page. Puts | in between for changed lines, > for added lines, < for removed lines. You might want to use fmt or some other cheap hack to make the lines 60 characters long, so the side by side output can fit on a 132 column page. Do what suits your taste. You say you only have 4.2bsd? Hey Bunky, that's too bad. Andy Tannenbaum Masscomp Westford, MA (617) 692-6200 x274