Track Edits in FrameMaker 10

[Joseph Lorenzini]

Hi Rick,

I'll just split this up into a pro and con list. :) Bottom line up front:
its a decent solution if you are using it for a small team with three
writers or less but it does not scale well at all in terms of content OR
the number of users making edits. You'd be better off just using the
commenting functionality in acrobat reader if there's a lot of edits/lots
of editors etc.

Pros:
-allows you to track new text added in and deleted text. Deleted text
appears in red and new text appears in green. Note these are in fact
"hidden" conditional text.
-allows you track which user has made a change so you can search for
particular edits by user. You can also filter the edits so you only see
edits by a particular user or users.
-TT edits can be controlled on the document and book level so you can flip
on TT edits for a particular book or for just a single document.
-enable or disable TT edits across an entire book via a single click.
-accept or reject all  TT edits across an entire book via a single click

Cons:
-no commenting functionality. If you want to make a comment, it will appear
as new text.
-no way to visually distinguish between editors. For example, if John Doe
inserts text and George Smith also inserts text they both appear as green
text. You just know its newly inserted text, you have to pay careful
attention via other subtle visual cues that its separate editors.
-can be really had to use if you use conditional text especially if the
text is the same color as the hidden conditional text of the insertion and
deletion edits. Note also that if you apply conditional text to TT edit
text that this can corrupt the book and cause the book to crash each time
you do an update and save.
-each time you turn TT edits it generates the stupid back up files for each
file in the book which you'll have to clean up each time.
-if you have a collaborative editing process where many people need to
review text, make edits, and comments, then the process becomes nightmarish
because its really hard to tell how is commenting on what or who is
responding to what comment.
-overall stability of framemaker seems to go down when the TT edits is
turned on. It might be better in framemaker 11.

Joe
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.frameusers.com/pipermail/framers-frameusers.com/attachments/20120912/65f4d2db/attachment.htm>