DD: Suggestions for Coherency

[Ben Trafford <btrafford@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hiya!

	Since I'm the one who opened his big yap on the topic, I've tried to
think of a few things that would help us with Paul Prescod's very
legitimate concerns about coherency and workflow. Excuse any presumption
on my part. . .these are just suggestions, though I tend to word things
strongly.

	1) I strongly suggest a single organizational editor, and a few editors
to check for technical consistency and grammar, etc. Any takers? I'm
assuming that Tony Graham would continue in the role of organizational
editor, as he's been doing so far. I'm going to delineate this main
editor as the editor, and the other editors as proofreaders. 
	2) If we each sent in a proposal outlining the section we intended to
write, which could then be organized by the editor for consistency, to
avoid overlap, and he could also make suggestions to plug up holes. 
	3) After all the outlines are approved, we could move on to actually
writing the main documents, which would be submitted to the proofreaders
and not the editor, so as to evenly spread out the work. 
	4) Once the proofreaders are done with something like a final draft of
each section, the editor could return and go through the whole manual
for consistency and coherency.
	5) Voila! Finished product!

	Perhaps this is oversimplifying, but I think the methodology is sound.
So, here's what we would need to implement this idea:

	1) Main editor.
	2) Five proofreaders (a guess).
	3) A writer for each chapter of the outline. I suggest we start with
the proposed DSSSL Handbook. Thus, we'd need a total of twenty-one
writers (more or less, depending on overlapping writers). This number
would be ideal, as we'd have one person writing each chapter.
	4) An indexer.
	5) Someone to design the actual layout of the manual.
	6) Someone to output the manual in different formats (PostScript, HTML,
SGML, etc.)

	We also ought to have a set of writing guidelines, methinks.

	So. . .those are my ideas. . .comments and criticisms are welcome, so
long as they offer solutions to problems. Just saying "it won't work"
doesn't help anybody.

	Thanks!

--->Ben Trafford
www.legacydata.net


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