Archives for October 2012

Word of Law No. 35 – A Collaboration on Collaboration 6

October 15, 2012 by

[Originally appeared 2000.]

We continue the series on collaboration, written by Bob Blacksberg in collaboration with Sherry Kappel of Microsystems. We have been reviewing third party tools for document comparison, looking to find solutions to the difficulties encountered with Word’s internal Track Changes and Compare Documents functions. In Word of Law No. 35 we quoted the Microsoft Legal Users Guide’s recommendation to law firms that a third party tool should be used for document comparison. A reader directed us also to guidance not to use both Word’s internal Track Changes feature and CompareRite.

In this week’s column, we consider the document comparison capabilities of Adobe’s Acrobat and Workshare’s DeltaView.

Similar to Lexis-Nexis CompareRite, the Compare Pages function of Adobe’s Acrobat delivers a report of changes between one document and another. Thus it supports the Comparison function, but not Tracking or Incorporation, that we have described in the preceding Word of Law columns. Acrobat’s technology avoids the document formatting and appearance issues that we have covered in the preceding columns, since the PDF (Portable Document Format) files are created from the print process.

There are several drawbacks to document comparison with Adobe Acrobat. These limit its effectiveness and practicality as a solution for document comparison and collaboration in legal practice and other work that requires a high degree of document comparison precision.

The Compare Pages function of Acrobat only highlights broad portions of text as changed, either entire pages, or significant portions of pages. Thus it does not offer the capability of showing changes in specific wording or sentences, or indicate text has been moved. It does not explicitly mark insertions and deletions.

The process of producing such a PDF comparison report from Word requires publishing both the original and the revised Word documents to PDF, then comparing the pages to determine the changed results. This function requires the full licensed version of Adobe Acrobat, not just the free and widely used Acrobat reader.

While these shortcomings make Acrobat fall short as a tool for supporting the document comparison functions we have sought, it can play a significant role in document collaboration under some circumstances. Publishing to Acrobat solves format incompatibilities among collaborators. If responsibility for editing is not shared among collaborators, then the PDF format and Acrobat’s tools include many features that assist in collaboration, such as document annotations. Publishing to PDF avoids transmitting undesirable information about the drafting process to third parties.

The newest document comparison product, DeltaView from Workshare Technology, Inc. (www.workshare.net) raises the bar significantly in its capabilities and performance in document comparison. It deserves serious evaluation by legal practices and any organization that requires intensive comparison of Microsoft Word documents. The availability of the most recent version, 2.5, was announced on August 17, 2000. The descriptions here are based on that version.

Where CompareRite was designed as a tool to create paper images of the results of document comparison and Adobe Acrobat was designed to create the electronic analogue in its print and page oriented presentation, DeltaView has been designed to create an on screen environment rich in its capabilities of supporting the document comparison, review and incorporation process. It also thoroughly supports printed reports of comparisons.

DeltaView works by launching a session with Word, opening the original and revised documents, then, using the inherent RTF SaveAs filters of Word, DeltaView creates a rich formatting context in which comparison of the document content can begin. Again, like Acrobat and CompareRite, DeltaView delivers a report of the changes. This report is delivered in either a .WDF (a Workshare proprietary format) readable by DeltaView, or an RTF file format which would then enable an editable report by any application which can read or open an RTF file format, or as a Microsoft Word document.

DeltaView’s onscreen review environment offers a multi-paned view of the document comparison report. It can show the results of comparison only, or present simultaneous views of the comparison results, together with either or both of the original document and the modified document. It can also present a pane with a summary of document changes. Navigation tools include backward and forward arrows to move from change to change, as well as live links between the document change summary and the changes in the document. All of the visible windows are linked, so navigating in any of the views moves the other open windows with this.

This multiple view addresses the concerns about legibility of document comparison that we described in issue 29. While the comparison report indicates where changes occur, comprehension of the meaning of the revised text often requires a “clear” reading of the modified document.

DeltaView supports comparison to show changes in formats, and, in a development most welcome, shows a variety of change in tables, including addition and removal of table cells. The rendering set allows distinctive coloring of inserted, deleted and moved table cells. On screen, these indications are very clear. For those relying on the printed output, the need to support color printing just grew.

The current version of DeltaView does not directly support Incorporation. An enhanced version of DeltaView, which Workshare calls “DeltaView Premier” is described on the Workshare web site, with an availability later this year. It will add an Incorporation function, making the “Modified” document window a functioning instance of Word linked to the other document comparison windows of DeltaView.

When the DeltaView comparison is saved to Word format, the markings for inserted, deleted and moved text use distinctive DeltaView styles. It would be possible to construct a macro based system for Incorporation, working with those styles. Given the support for that function in the Premier Version, such an effort needs to be weighed against waiting for Workshare to support this function.

Workshare’s experience with enterprise document tools shows in the features of DeltaView. The developers of DeltaView had been the authors of SafetyGain, a companion product that supports offline use of the document management system, DOCS Open. DeltaView includes enterprise configuration support, such as the management of rendering sets and integration with iManage, DOCS Open and WORLDOX document management systems. The additional collaborative capabilities of DeltaView Premier look intriguing. We will track those developments and report on them as that version of the product becomes available.

All of this discussion of document comparison requires some reminders of the importance of version control. That can lead off next week’s column.

This 2000 article originally appeared in Office Watch. Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.

Filed Under: (Classic) Word of Law, Collaboration On Collaboration 2000

Word of Law No. 34 – Collaboration on Collaboration 5 – Comparison with CompareRite

October 15, 2012 by

[Originally appeared 2000.]

We continue the series on collaboration, written by Bob Blacksberg in collaboration with Sherry Kappel of Microsystems. In Word of Law No. 33, we looked at the capabilities and shortfalls of the document tracking and comparison functions of Word 97 and 2000. The limits of these built-in functions to meet the demands of precise and complete document comparison required for legal practice, together with the unintended evidence of the drafting process that can remain in an electronic version of a document after track changes has been used, left Microsoft advising law firms to look to third party solutions for document comparison.

As usual, we trust that the focus here on the needs of legal practice informs the users of Microsoft Word in other organizations, especially when documents need to be written and edited with the care and precision used for drafting legal documents.

This week’s column considers CompareRite, the historical leader among third party comparison tools. For several years, this product has been owned by Lexis Nexis Group.

CompareRite works outside of the Word application, reading the original and revised files, then creating a third document, reporting the changes found between the two. Similar to the Compare Documents function built in to Word, the resulting report is an editable document. Where Word’s Compare Documents function applies Word 97 and Word 2000’s track changes feature to mark changes, the results of CompareRite document uses character insertions (“[” or “]”, for example) and character attributes – strike-through, bolding, double underlines – to denote inserted, deleted or moved text.

CompareRite supports a greater variety of methods of reporting the comparison than the built-in function in Word, such as changing the boundary characters and formats for inserted characters, using placeholders instead of strikeout text for deletions and applying special markings for moved text (instead of Word’s pattern of showing the text deleted in its original location and inserted in its new). The selection of options can be stored by users.

Of the collaboration functions relating to document comparison described in issue 35, CompareRite supports only Comparison, not Tracking or Incorporation. That is, it can only produce the document reporting changes, but not create a record within the document of who made the changes and when, as the Track Changes feature does in Word, or automate the process of incorporating changes into a revised document, as the Accept or Reject Changes feature does in Word.

This limitation of CompareRite has its benefits, since it assures the integrity of the original and revised documents, including protecting the clean revised document from the evidence of the drafting process that can be left behind when Track Changes are used.

One cannot speak about CompareRite without realizing first that law firms have long integrated use of the tool into their daily work, bringing one legal secretary to conclude that her “attorneys have forgotten how to practice law without it!” In fact, when the product was paired in its early years with WordPerfect 5.1, the two applications worked almost in harmony, creating a level ofstability and performance difficult to match in with any other word processing application.

It is not nostalgia which made CompareRite the legal industry’s de facto choice, but rather its “pinpoint” comparison algorithms. Historically, comparison products have underachieved when – dare we say it? – compared to CompareRite’s routines for precisely detecting complex moves and changes. It is, in fact, this precision and accuracy which continues to justify that an organization ferret out solutions and workarounds to CompareRite’s common fits and starts – a situation which exists whether it is comparing two Word documents or (even) two WordPerfect documents.

This situation has evolved over the course of the last decade, as CompareRite continued to revise its proprietary binary file converters to meet each new word processing application’s enhancements and binary file format revisions. This legacy has challenged the application, reaching a critical stage with the release of Word 97:

Prior to that release of Word 97, CompareRite rendered the comparison of Word 6/95 documents by reading the applications’ binary file format, and writing a binary Word result. With the release of Word 97, however, when the significantly revised binary file format specification was not made available for nearly a year from Microsoft, Lexis was forced to take an alternative plan of action. Microsoft provided the vendor with an RTF file converter which would run stand-alone – without invoking Microsoft Word itself.

It turns out this filter was several revisions behind the released converter internal to Word. If you have not completely suppressed these events from memory, the RTF converter which was internal to Microsoft Word suffered more than its share of flux during that period of time. Because of these issues, as well as CompareRite’s inability to compare the content of tables, CompareRite and Word 97 had much difficulty operating together.

These difficulties have promoted, however painfully, an awareness of the importance of common formatting practices and consistent and intelligent procedures for conversion of documents from WordPerfect to Word. This, coupled with the recent release of CompareRite’s Version 7, Patch 9A, have eased the burden’s of the use of CompareRite to some degree. Patch 9a, whose design and stability benefits are only experienced fully, however, using Word 2000, can run Word to generate its RTF files, improving its accuracy and stability.

Still there are common issues which compromise the success of using CompareRite with Microsoft Word. These include:

  • Non-uniform tables. CompareRite doesn’t handle tables at all. If they must be compared, turning troublesome tables into text makes the most sense in many of these situations.
  • Poor or corrupt field code construction (e.g., unpaired field codes, or improperly delimited field code text).
  • Inconsistent formatting between the original and revised documents, primarily in the realm of numbering.
  • Corrupt or poorly converted documents.

It is hard to write about using CompareRite without restating the need for good version control practices. That, however, merits its own column. In the next column, we will continue the story with the document comparison capabilities of Adobe Acrobat and WorkShare’s DeltaView.

This 2000 article originally appeared in Office Watch. Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.

Filed Under: (Classic) Word of Law

Word of Law No. 32 – The Templates That Aren’t

October 15, 2012 by

[Originally published 2000.]

We will take a slight detour from the main path of the series on collaboration to take a look at a new Template Gallery on Microsoft’s web site http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/TemplateGallery. Microsoft has organized a collection of Word templates and introduces it this way:

“For those times when you know what you need but don’t want to start from scratch, we’ve created the Template Gallery. We’ve partnered with content experts to provide you with hundreds of useful templates to get your work done. We already have hundreds of templates: resumes, cover letters, sales and marketing documents, collection letters, legal documents, complaint letters, and much more. And, we’re just getting started. We are working with a growing set of partners to provide additional templates based on suggestions from our customers like you.”

Since I first opened Word, I have admired the templates shipped with the program. They are attractive, and their formatting is a model for Word use. In fact, they were a significant source for the Laws of Styles stated in the first Word of Law column. Take, for instance, the Letter templates, Professional Letter, Contemporary Letter and Elegant Letter. The key elements each have their own aptly and consistently named styles: Company Name, Date, Salutation, Body Text, Closing and Signature. A letter created with one of the templates can be transformed to the formatting of one of the others in one step through the Style Gallery. I can create no better demonstration of the use or benefit of observing the Laws of Styles.

The templates presented so far in the online Template Gallery utterly fail to meet these standards of excellence in formatting. Nearly all of the documents are formatted entirely in Normal Style. I did find one use of Heading 1 in the Business Card template under the heading “Stationary, Labels and Cards.” Space between paragraphs is created by empty paragraphs throughout the set. Even the more complex legal documents suffer from these and other undesirable formats, such as partial use of automatic numbering.

This is not the place to consider the quality of content of these templates. Most users of templates such as those presented in the Template Gallery, especially those in legal practice, would modify the content of a template prepared elsewhere for the particular needs of their organization or to follow their professional judgment.

A somewhat more minor criticism of the Template Gallery is that the “Edit in Microsoft Word” command on the template preview screen opens a new instance of Word each time it is used. The command itself is a javascript command.

We can only hope that the design wisdom and quality control applied to the templates that ship with Word can be brought to future contributions to the Template Gallery.

This 2000 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.

Filed Under: (Classic) Word of Law

Word of Law No. 31 – A Collaboration on Collaboration 3

October 15, 2012 by

[Originally appeared 2000.]

The Word of Law Column in the last issue began to answer the questions about collaboration begun in Word of Law No. 29. In answering, “What activities must be supported when drafting documents collaboratively,” we covered the first four of a list that included, “share, compare, track, review, comment, find, model, and reuse.” This week’s column picks up from there.

COMMENT

Drafting or review of documents may be accompanied by a simple or complex conversation among collaborators. They may cite references, share their analysis, explain their changes, even criticize or disagree with the author. Microsoft Word supports these kinds of functions in its comments function, but as convenient as that format may seem, we may not want to put comments in the body of documents where they could be preserved accidentally for unauthorized view. Comments may be found in transmittal letters, cover memos or e-mail transmittals. Their disconnection from the text may limit their value in the drafting process. The newest electronic or even web-based collaboration systems support discussion threads that may be associated with document drafts.

FIND

There can be no collaboration over a document, nor can any of its inherent activities be facilitated, if the document over which collaboration is required can’t be found! Thus, to support fully document collaboration in a cooperative setting, the collaborators must share methods of access and nomenclature, be able to view the history of the document, the ownership of the document, and, most importantly, the availability of the document. Sometimes this activity requires standardization of document locale. A document can be shared effectively when stored on a Web server and access is protected, perhaps on a document management system. The altogether too common attempts to administer and maintain collaboration of documents attached to e-mail messages are likely to cause difficulties.

MODEL

In many organizations, standards should play a significant role in our document drafting. The standards include both document formatting and content. Collaboration, especially in a cooperative environment, benefits significantly from preparing and using document standards. In this column, we have emphasized repeatedly the value of a common set of document styles, stored and applied through a set of Microsoft Word templates. The identification of standard text, or text components, enables collaboration to focus on the special elements, those for which our drafting effort has the highest value.

REUSE

This function is one which can simultaneously leverage the productivity of document collaboration, and which, if performed without skill, forethought, and best practices, can unravel and defeat the productivity we seek to gain. The reuse of document content has been a prevalent practice in our industry since the advent of computer-generated paper documents, yet some of these same unsuspecting practices exercised on an electronically collaborated document may actually harm our ability to reuse existing electronic content at all. Do we have readily available content to support our current drafting requirement? If so, is it accessible from a currently supported file format or does it require conversion? If the content does not require conversion, does the formatting associated to it require touch-up, or realignment to our current model? Do we have proper tools for conversion? Are we employing proper approaches for copying, cutting and pasting content between documents? Are we skillfully inputting our content such that it can be reused in a manner that survives beyond this document’s moment? Do we make proper document construction choices: when should we use a table vs. tabs?Are we using styles to impose our general format choices, and then using manually-applied formats only for occasional format situations? Each of these speaks to the reusability of our content – and to the productivity we can gain or lose by collaboration.

How should these activities be different when the collaboration context is cooperative, and when it is reviewed by the opposing side?

While we may wish to strengthen the collaborative environment in a cooperative context, we need to be careful about the information that we expose about the drafting of documents when the document is shared with or published to others who are do not work with us. When the opposing side only received paper copy, this barrier was easy to maintain. As we pursue the practice and tools of electronic collaboration, the easiest guideline should be that those outside our organization see only the finished draft or document that we intend for them to see, and do not have access to the other information, drafts or comments that we include in our systems for collaboration. Please note that those “inside” our organization for document drafting may include persons employed by others such as attorney and client.

This 2000 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.

Filed Under: (Classic) Word of Law, Collaboration On Collaboration 2000

Word of Law No. 30 – Collaboration on Collaboration – 2

October 15, 2012 by

[Originally appeared 2000.]

The Word of Law column published in Word of Law No. 29 began a series on collaboration. As we begin answering the questions posed in that column, the discussion may seem a bit abstract. Why take two or three columns before describing any specific information about Microsoft Word or other products? The answer lies in the role of system architect described issue 4.48. To make sense of the techniques and the need for tools inside and outside of Microsoft Word, we must have a common understanding of the activities to be supported when drafting collaboratively. Some of these points may seem basic. It doesn’t hurt to remember the basics when trying to accomplish something new or sophisticated. Also, as we look at the behavior of the collaborative tools and techniques, we need to define what we could and should do with them, before we can answer whether they work properly, or what works best.

What activities must be supported when drafting documents collaboratively?

We can distill collaboration to a series of verbs: share, compare, track, review, comment, find, model, reuse. Some of these activities are simple, others subtle. Some require a disciplined community of use in order to function effectively.

SHARE

Nothing could be more basic to collaboration than the notion that more than one person takes responsibility for writing and editing a document. The collaborators may be peers, as Sherry and Bob seek to be in preparing this series. They may consist of a chain of responsibility, such as author, proofreader and editor, or, in the context of law practice, paralegal, associate and partner. Shared responsibility for drafting may also be adversarial. At times, it may appear that lawyers have substituted the printed page for the field of battle. Note that in this description, we leave out author and secretary. This discussion concentrates on shared responsibility for the substance of documents. For this purpose, we will assume that the secretarial role does not include responsibility for the substance of a document, although in real life, the opposite is so often true.

Those who share responsibility for drafting a document must explicitly or implicitly agree on the methods and responsibilities. This used to be much easier. The author (with appropriate secretarial or printing assistance) typed and copied the draft or galleys and distributed them physically to the collaborators. The collaborators made changes by hand markup, or a combination of markup and correspondence suggesting revisions. The author accumulated the suggested or directed changes to produce a revised draft. Today’s electronic document sharing imposes new issues in the sharing process.

Although the concept of sharing is not limited to this meaning, it can be helpful in contrasting “review” activities by thinking about collaboration prior to publication or distribution of a draft document to “third” parties. Prior to distribution, the comments must be assembled into a single complete draft. At this point, the decisions about the methods and extent of markup and other document drafting information must be determined.

COMPARE

For many users, we could complete the story of collaboration at “share and compare.” In a drafting process that requires a series of revisions, the author must display to the rest of the collaborators the changes made between drafts. Text may have been inserted, deleted or moved. Sometimes formatting changes need to be highlighted, particularly if they indicate a change in the structure of a document. Document comparison may also be used forensically. A reviewer or adversary may receive a series of drafts of a document that have not been marked by the author, and wish to determine whether and what changes have been made.

In prehistoric times (sorry, we meant before widespread use of personal computers and contemporary word processing), document comparison required that drafts be marked by hand to show changes. Typically, inserted text was underlined and the locations of deleted text were marked with a carat (^) or other distinctive symbol. The use of red pen for the original markup led to the term “redline” for a document marked in this way, although the lack of color copiers led many of us to call these “blacklined” instead.

Word processing and especially the third party comparison programs have brought us computer generated markup to facilitate document comparison. We will examine these functions thoroughly in this series. For now, let’s focus on what document comparison should accomplish, both from the perspective of the collaborators and the computer. The collaborators need the markup to indicate to each other whether a change has been made in the text and the substance of the change. The markup need to be complete, neither missing the occurrence of changes nor marking unchanged text falsely as changed.

An aspect of this comparison process that receives little discussion might best be called “legibility.” The collaborators must be able to read both current and prior versions of a document clearly, able to follow its substance before and after the changes. The blacklined copy itself can easily lose legibility. If a paragraph includes several insertions and deletions, marked, for instance, in a series of brackets, double underlines and strikeouts, the effort to read either the current version straight through, or the prior version, can take significant mental effort. In Bob’s legal practice, when collaborating with others on the drafting of complex documents, he often distributed both changed pages, marked by manual or machine blacklining, and a clean revised copy of the document. The collaborators or reviewers were assumed to have the prior clean copy of the document. If the drafting were critical enough, the reviewer might work with all three of the blackline, the prior copy and the current copy arrayed on their desk. Microsoft Word offers some of this capability in the options available in its Track Changes feature. We will share concerns about the use of that feature, however, later in this series. DeltaView, the newest of the third party document comparison tools, supports a three pane view of the original document and revised document in their unmarked form, linked on the screen to the blacklined copy.

The issue of legibility helps demonstrate that there is no “perfect” document comparison. The “perfect” text lies in the old and new versions. The comparison, manual or machine, is only a tool for locating and indicating the changes.

TRACK

Word processing, aided and abetted by e-mail and other connectivity, have promoted an expansion and intensification of collaboration, whether in paper distribution and review of drafts or directly in electronic formats As the number of parties involved in a document’s collaboration grows and the expectations for turnaround time of drafts shrink, it has become necessary to manage the tasks and status of collaboration from a work flow perspective. Fully tracking these activities may involve designating a person as an overall sponsor of the document and performing the recordkeeping tasks associated to the parties involved in the documents’ creation, revision and distribution cycles. This function informs, monitors, and generates status surrounding the collective pursuit. Tracking, then, involves all activities associated to managing the document from its project perspective: who has responsibility for what section of the document, what timeframes must be met and what distribution mechanisms must be accommodated.

Conscious decisions need to be made about the level of detail that should be maintained of the document drafting process. The Track Changes feature of Microsoft Word records within the document the time and date on which each change was made and the name Word assigns to the “user” when the editing was made. This may or may not be desirable information to maintain within the document, especially when the electronic form of the document is distributed to adverse persons. It may be desirable to maintain an “audit history” of the document, recording who made what changes at what times.

A key issue in document drafting is when to save a file as a new version. Version control is key to performing document comparisons accurately and to maintaining the integrity of the audit history. At the very least, new versions are required for documents each time they are published and distributed.

REVIEW

It can be valuable to distinguish the review of a distributed or published draft from cooperative editing. A person defined as a reviewer generally will not have responsibility for making or affirming the changes to the proposed draft, especially if there are multiple reviewers. That responsibility will be kept with the document’s author or sponsor. It may be desirable to deliver a document to a reviewer in a form that does not permit them to edit the text, but only to annotate it. While distribution of paper copy without electronic versions suffices, in the electronic world, a similar approach can be accomplished by publishing documents to a non-editable form, such as Adobe Acrobat.

This may not be the best point to pause this discussion, but it has taken up the week’s worth of column space. We will pick up the trail with the Comment activity in the next issue.

This 2000 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.

Filed Under: (Classic) Word of Law, Collaboration On Collaboration 2000

Word of Law No. 29 – A Collaboration on Collaboration

October 12, 2012 by

[Originally appeared 2000.]

Shared responsibility for the drafting and editing of documents can hardly be said to be unique to the practice of law. Yet lawyers do so with an intensity and attention to detail (perhaps better termed an obsession) difficult to match in any other document endeavor. Every word of a legal document may have consequences. At least, we lawyers are trained to draft as if that were the case. Once again we hope that an aspect of Word that so engages lawyers will inform others who use the program at industrial strength.

In this series we will explore the methods, tools and issues relating to the collaborative drafting of documents. This review will include the tools and functions within Word that assist (and sometimes hinder) this process, as well as third party products that can extend Word’s capabilities. We will look beyond word processing to consider issues relating to document storage and tracking when sharing responsibility for document drafting. In that spirit, we will look especially at the newly sprouting Web enabled systems to support collaborative drafting.

As we begin to explore this topic within our legal context, it will often matter who is participating in the process of collaboration. Let’s distinguish between “cooperative collaboration,” where all those who share responsibility live within our physical or virtual walls (and would sit on the same side of the table at a physical or virtual meeting) and “adversarial review” among those with differing (and sometimes very much competing) interests.

We will try to answer the following questions:

What activities must be supported when drafting documents collaboratively?

How should these activities be different when the collaboration context is cooperative, and when it is reviewed by the opposing side?

Has the ability to electronically share our documents altered our activities in any way? Or do we consider sharing our documents electronically with outside parties as being ‘different’ at all?

How do tools for document comparison – the phase which identifies changes in document content – improve or hinder our process? What are the strengths and weaknesses of these tools? Are tools internal to Word better than third-party tools?

What do the third-party tools enable which internal Word functionality does not? What causes the document comparison process to break down? Once broken, how can it be fixed?

What are the differences between Word’s Track Changes, File Versions and Compare Documents features?

What techniques can be used to assure the identity of the persons who have worked on a document?

How does Word preserve evidence of the drafting process? What strategies can be used to avoid creating this information in the first place? When it is desired to include such information during drafting, how can it be cleaned out before delivery of a document?

How should documents be stored to promote successful collaboration and maintain a proper revision history? What capabilities are offered by the file system, enterprise-wide document management systems and Web-based collaboration systems? Where do Web-enabled on-line collaboration tools fit into the process – better still, when will they fit in?

We will begin answering these questions in the next column. For now, just realize how few years ago it was that we supported teams of proofreaders whose job it was to review paper copies of the original document against paper copies of the revised version. eyeballing any differences they found between the two. Indeed, the term “redline” was derived from the generation of hand-drawn underlines made using a red pencil or pen. Today, we electronically produce this compared or redlined result, accelerating our ability to review, then accept or decline, changes made between parties.

But we’re moving toward a new document processing arena: where the revision process occurs not between parties on paper, but between parties on-line. We expect nearly instantaneous, if not simultaneous access to documents as they are drafted. As connectivity barriers faced as few as three years ago become relics of the past, we struggle through the new and emerging issues surrounding the document collaboration task: Do we have the same word processing applications? Do we share the same comparison technologies? Which choices better provide for the client share moment, and which choices produce a high-maintenance relationship where successful sharing is elusive?

The exchange of paper drafts of documents created few of practice issues described above. While the arrival of word processing both accelerated and intensified the drafting process, other times, the freedom to make changes invited more frequent and involved revisions. The electronic exchange of documents, however, both creates opportunities for enhancement of the speed and thoroughness with which collaboration can be accomplished, and risks accidental or malicious change as well as intentional or unintentional exposure of the details of the development of a document draft.

One could hardly imagine a more fitting topic on which to practice collaborative drafting than the writing of this series. Thus, a collaborative drafting environment has been established, in which Sherry Kappel of Microsystems (www.microsystems.com) will share her expertise with Word, especially extensive experience in the art and agony of document comparison, and with the hazards of electronically sharing document content.

 

This 2000 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.

Filed Under: (Classic) Word of Law, Collaboration On Collaboration 2000

Word of Law No. 17 – Word Wish List

October 12, 2012 by

[Originally appeared 1999.]

Early in the summer, many of you offered suggestions for improvements to Microsoft Word. The following suggestions seem intriguing.

Layout

Several readers requested support for logical page subdivision of physical pages. This would be in addition to the tables or labels workarounds.

Improve line spacing, especially for equations and sub or superscripts. A reader suggested that a possible solution to the line spacing problem would be to provide a paragraph property that basically tells Word to turn off its “don’t overlap objects in one line with another at all costs” feature. This would allow the user to take responsibility for any overlaps and let them correct this problem.

Support portrait headers or footers on landscape pages. This would allow proper orientation for page numbers and other header or footer information in documents with a mixture of landscape and portrait orientation.

Views

After scrolling through a document in Print Preview, support exiting with the cursor moved to the matching location in the document instead of the location of the cursor when entering Print Preview.

Allow screen display of revision markings separately by author, and to review revisions sequentially for a particular author only. The reader suggested that an author can preserve all revisions in a marked up draft, while focusing temporarily only on those changes proposed by a particular colleague or adverse party, for example.

Tools

Allow Word to be able to sort by other than the first word in a field.

Improve spell checking:

(a) Offer an option to recognize a possessive form of a word marked to be ignored or have added to the custom dictionary in its nominative form.

(b) Suggest replacements for weird misspellings that arise only because a single character, adjacent on the QWERTY keyboard to the intended one, has been struck.

Searching

Support stronger find/replace wildcards (pattern matching). The reader commented that that pattern matching in Word 97 might generate a “pattern too complex” message more frequently than Word 95.

Offer conditional searching that would include “find occurrences of foo that are occurrences of foobar”. Example, Find all occurrences of “From:” that are not “^^pFrom:” (ie. “From: at the beginning of the sentence”)

Printing

Allow sections to print to different printers. This would assist with documents with some color diagrams, especially if the color printer is either much slower or more expensive than the black and white printer.

Add sections to the “Print what” choice in the Print dialog. On large, multi-sectioned documents, it would be very helpful to print the current section.

File Management

In the File Open dialog, offer automatic scroll down or filtering based on letters or numbers entered in the File Name field. There is no matching in Word 97. In Word 2000, the File Name field autocompletes to the nearest matching name, but the file list focus does not shift to highlight the matching file.

These are a few of the ideas offered by the readers of this column. Thanks again for the thoughtfulness of your comments. Rereading those e-mails reminded me how many issues have been raised. Please keep writing.

This 1999 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.

 

Filed Under: (Classic) Word of Law

Word of Law No. 15 – Inside the Style Gallery

October 12, 2012 by

[Originally appeared 1999.]

Word of Law No. 14 touched on use of the Style Gallery. It deserves deeper exploration. We explored how a document acquires styles and their settings from the template which gave birth to it. On creation of a document, that template becomes the document’s “attached template.”

The Style Gallery permits the settings of the styles in a document to be changed by copying the styles from another template. In a default installation, the Style Gallery can be accessed from the Format menu. The Style Gallery itself is a fancy display tool that has a simple result. When a template is picked, the resulting command, as described last time, is “ActiveDocument.CopyStylesFromTemplate (Template Name as String).” This can only copy those styles that are in the indicated template. That step automatically overwrites the settings for any of those styles that are in the current document and adds the styles in the copied template that are not in the current document. It will not change any styles in the current document that are not in the copied document.

The Style Gallery displays all of the templates that are located in the file locations for User Templates and Workgroup Templates in a single alphabetical list. If an organization has taken pains to organize its templates in a set of practice area related folders (such as Corporate or Litigation in a law practice), the list in the Style Gallery will not display that organization, since all of the templates in the subfolders join the single alphabetical list.

Effective use of the Style Gallery and template development generally can be helped by the creation and maintenance of a set of templates whose only purpose is to serve as a container for the styles for a class of documents. For example, there could be “Blank Correspondence,” “Blank Agreement”, “Blank Policy Manual” and “Blank Report.” These should contain the full set of styles that should be applied to those documents, obedient to the naming conventions in the Laws of Styles (Issue 4.20). To make these most easily visible in the Style Gallery list, their name can be preceded by a non alphabetic character such as an underscore ( _ ) to force them to the top of the list.

The Style Gallery dialog contains a preview window, controlled by the option buttons in the lower left corner of the dialog. The first Preview option, “Document,” displays the text of the active document, as it would appear if the styles from the selected template were copied to it. When working with fairly complete documents, this option works fine. When working with blank documents, such as in template development, the second and third Preview options, “Example” and “Style Samples” can be helpful. It takes some work in template development, however, for anything to be visible when these options are selected. Without that preparation, the preview will read “There is no example for this template” or “There is no sample for this template.”

The trick is to create AutoText entries in the template titled (precisely) “Gallery Example” and “Gallery Style Samples,” respectively. Any text containing whatever selection of styles can be used in these two AutoText entries. Thus, it would be helpful to include the name of the styles used in the sample text.

The details on the use of styles just in these last two columns, as with nearly all of the issues that have been explored in this column, emphasize the critical importance for an organization to separate the regular use from development and maintenance of Microsoft Word’s tools. Users should have the tools they need to create, edit and complete their work without having to deal with the underlying complexity we have explored. If the central development staff has prepared templates properly, including tools such as the Blank templates described above, users can easily produce or modify their Word documents in accordance with organization standards. The general user can limit the time spent on tweaking their documents, often damaging consistency with standards in the process.

The central development staff should master the complexities, such as construction of templates with Style examples described above. Please do not understand this suggestion to mean that all Word development should be limited to a group closeted away from regular users. The development staff should incorporate lead users who have the skill and interest to master the features. Such users may start as testers or pilot users for the work of the developers, then perhaps even move into a development group over time.

In a future column, we will compare the use of the Style Gallery to changing the Attached Template. Understanding that fully requires the context of the other characteristics of a template.

 

This 1999 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.

Filed Under: (Classic) Word of Law

Word of Law No. 14 – Tracing Styles from Template to Document

October 11, 2012 by

[Originally appeared 1999.]

One correspondent asked about the advice  to store keystrokes assignments for Styles in a Global Template. She expressed her frustration about not being able to use a global template to distribute to users the organization’s Styles themselves as well as the keystrokes.

To respond thoroughly to that question requires an understanding of the functions of different kinds of templates, a strategy for using them and how styles fit into the picture. Let’s start by answering the question directly, and then begin to step back to the broader view.

Global Templates are templates loaded and made available to all of the operations of Word, no matter what document is being edited currently. The list of active global templates can be found in the dialog launched by Tools | Templates and Add-ins. The lower portion of that dialog lists “Global templates and add-ins.” These include the .dot files stored in the Word startup file location (set by the Startup entry in the File Locations tab of the dialog launched by Tools | Options). Those files are automatically loaded every time Word starts. Templates located in other locations can be made global by loading them manually after Word starts. This can also be done under macro control.

While a loaded global template enables its keystroke assignments to users (along with a number of other features, including as AutoText, menus, toolbars and macros) it does not make its styles available to documents. The short answer to the correspondent’s question, then, is no. True, a macro solution could be devised to work around this limitation. It would not be consistent with the strategy for Word advocated here.

We begin a broader exploration by tracing styles from template to document.

A document obtains its styles first from the template from which it was created. I like to call such templates “File | New” Templates (pronouncing the | as a kind of short required pause). This refers to their use in the dialog launched by default by File|New. The creation of a new document opens a new document with copy of the text of the template and copies the styles and their parameters to the new document. It also makes the source template the “attached template” for the document. This is shown in the upper portion of the Templates and Add-ins dialog.

During the life of a document, the values for styles in that document can change as users modify the styles directly, or copy the styles from another template using the Style Gallery tool. While we have already touched on the Style Gallery and will explore it further, it can be best understood as a visual tool for applying a fairly simple command. It can copy the styles and their parameters from the templates located in the File|New folder/directory tree to the current document. The command itself is ActiveDocument.CopyStylesFromTemplate (Template Name as String). While the Style Gallery only displays the templates in the File|New tree, the command can use any template.

Word has a setting that can force styles back to their default settings from the attached template. It appears in the check box labeled “Automatically update document styles” near the top of the Templates and Add-ins dialog. When checked, the values for all styles in the document included in the attached template will update to the values in the attached template each time the document is opened. The use of the word “update” in this context seems to refer to the ability to distribute revised versions of templates and conform documents based on them to any changes in the parameters of their styles. If instead the styles have been modified in the document rather then the attached template, this function will cause the parameters of the styles to revert to those of the attached template.

Curiously, checking the Automatically Update Document Styles box while editing and saving a template does not enable it for documents based on that template. Without any macro help, a user must set that value manually after a document is created. One way to force documents based on a template to have this function enabled is to include AutoNew macro in the template. The command is ActiveDocument.UpdateStylesOnOpen = True.

There are dangers and traps here for developing, maintaining and promoting effective use of templates and styles, especially for an organization that seeks to follow the Laws of Styles (issue 4.20). From my perspective, user confusion can be minimized by providing a good set of tools and standards, but not over automating their functions.

An organization needs a set of File|New templates from which its most frequently used documents are created, including ones for blank documents. These should employ a common and consistently named set of styles as described in the Laws of Styles. The correspondent’s search for a single universal set of styles for an organization is not consistent with this recommendation. Documents should be able to transform their formatting from time to time. If text has the same function in differently formatted documents, it should have the same style name (the third Law of Styles). Then the Style Gallery tool will allow the document to be reformatted to the alternative standard in one step. If styles need to be reset to the values in their source template, the Style Gallery (or a macro) can do this intentionally. From a user perspective, this power applied deliberately should be less confusing than enabling the automatically update function.

This 1999 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.

Filed Under: (Classic) Word of Law

Defeat Distraction – Restore Focus

October 4, 2012 by

Too many stimuli – too many interruptions – too little focus – too little thought?

For those of us who find neatness and organization an ever present challenge, our screens – whether computer, phone or tablet, may offer no refuge. Littered with icons, busied with backgrounds, riddled with ribbons – the typical Windows landscape.

My inspiration for this essay comes from an iPad / iPhone App called Zen Brush. Written by folks in Japan who live near the center of the 2011 earthquake, it presents a drawing surface elegant in its simplicity and execution. It presents so few controls, yet render strokes with a delightful.

Zen Brush Screen from iPad

As a tool for a purely visual activity, the wordless experience when drawing with Zen Brush works well. Just two brush shades, brush size, erase and a packaged set of themes are all the tools presented. For $2.99, try it and enjoy.

The iPad experience and the pleasure of Zen Brush inspired me to take a fresh look at Windows techniques that  minimize visual clutter, and help focus thought and work on the task at hand. Before trying these, try to sense how you interact with a computer. These suggestions may work better if the name of a program triggers thought more easily than an icon. If you can click on an icon without thinking at all about the name of the program, more visual cues may help. My strategy uses both – starting with names, then using fewer visual cues in their appropriate context. These suggestions assume a Windows 7 environment, without the touch screen enhancements coming in Windows 8.

First Step – Clear the Icons
Clear the icons off your desktop. As an experiment in near zero clutter, trying clearing everything but the Recycle Bin. (It resists removal anyway.) Mousing to an icon, especially when there are many of them, is slow and a demanding hand / eye coordination activity. The visual benefits of icons are reduced when they rearrange or move.

To launch programs, use a combination of the task bar for just a few of the most frequently used programs and Windows Search for less frequently used programs. I prefer Windows search to the Start Menu. It is fast, and it triggers the brain’s association with the name or a program, without having to mouse through a menu.

Second Step – A Peaceful Desktop

Simplify the desktop, using an image or theme with minimal distraction. While it is most tempting to populate the desk with the delicious smile of offspring, that will also reduce  focus on work. Enjoy those photos in their appropriate time. For your desktop, choose a photo or artwork with low detail or just a soothing color or gradient.

Third Step – Hide the Ribbons

The ribbon interface – officially in Microsoft Speak the Fluent User Interface – can be hidden. I prefer to toggle it with CTRL F1, but there is also the caret icon in the upper right corner of the ribbon. When needed for a task, the detailed collection of tools presented by a ribbon can be very helpful. When not needed, hiding the clutter of icons  lowers stress and distraction .

Fourth Step – Magic Keys

With Windows 7 we have a tool for managing the cluttered pile of too many open windows . The combination of Windows (Start) key (between CTRL and  ALT ) plus D toggles the open windows with a clean  desktop – instantly.  Though the Show Desktop region to the right of the time in the task bar does the same thing,  keystrokes remove the need for mouse precision. The Windows key plus TAB cycles open windows in a dramatic visual that also presents an uncluttered and focused way to view and choose a window. Together, showing the desktop, then Windows TAB to a desired window offers a clear clean focused way to navigate.

Let me know whether you find this strategy helpful.

Filed Under: (Re)Enabling - A Blog Tagged With:
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