Re: Tools

i18n@... wrote:

>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> > How would that be any more efficient than Insert > Symbol?
>
> Just one more solution among a list you have been provided. YMMV" means
> "your mileage may vary". Whether it is more efficient or not, or if you
> choose to use it is entirely up to you. Not interested in debating it -
> try it if you want to, don't if you don't want to. Whatever decision you
> make is fine by me :)

Solutions are generally offered for the purpose of being helpful, not
for the purpose of showing off.

> > Authors are sometimes asked to do that. Coyeditors serving as
> > typesetters, who are concerned with page layout at the same time as
> > content and style, don't have the option.
>
> Well, that is an interesting issue. I am sincerely interested in your
> opinion on this matter: Do you feel that there is a blurring of roles
> here between copy editor and typesetter? I have felt for a while,
> without pursuing it too deeply, that "writers" are often forced by
> modern organizational constraints, to be either "copy editors" or
> "typesetters" or both, in addition to their writing duties. Or, if the

Only by publishers that abrogate their responsibilities by demanding
camera-ready copy.

> two latter responsibilities are separated form the writing, the
> nonetheless land in the same place. Do you think those are separate
> skill sets best managed separately?

I copyedited many books on paper. Of course the qeustion didn't arise; I
simply told them what to print, including making the diacritics and the
levels of heading clear.

When the University of Chicago Press went to electronic copyediting, the
editors got to put in the typesetting codes for all unusual characters
(even the acute grave etc. letters that can be typed straightforwardly
on the Mac and cumbersomely on the Windows) and ordinary formatting.

I typesetted several books for which I was not the editor -- Routledge's
Semitic Languages and Dravidian Languages, Nick Ostler's Empires of the
Word for HarperCollins -- and followed copy no matter what.

But when I am doing both, the two processes proceed simultaneously. In
the case of FrameMaker there's little choice, because it's permanently
WYSIWYG; in Word (which I wouldn't consider sophisticated enough to do
quality typesetting, but it's what the publisher uses), I prefer to edit
in Normal and then go back and typeset in Page View.

> BTW, translators often have similar issues - they are expected to be
> copy editors as well as translators, and sometimes even typesetters.

When I translate, a basic principle is that the cognate is almost always
_not_ the right word to use.

Of course one tries to come up with the best possible English (do you
call that coypyediting?), but of course the editor edits it as well.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...