I have been using Acrobat commenting tools for many years in the context of my jobs in publishing and am well aware that there are "good" and "bad" ways to mark up a pdf.
I have trained quite a few people over the years in what I believe to be best practices. Now I am on the vendor side, so my people receive poorly marked up pdfs and then the clients wonder why so many corrections were missed.
Are there any "official" best practices I can share with these clients?
It's a delicate situation because I feel strongly that these people really don't know how to use the tools, but I can't appear to be making excuses for my staff.
In lieu of any such standards I'll probably just have to mark up one of their pdfs from which I've deleted their comments and hope the best.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
dg27
standards and best practices for commenting and mark-up?
2010-12-20 07:16:35
My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro 9.2, Windows
Acrobat Pro 9.2, Windows
2010-12-20 08:28:24
#2
Thanks, try67. That's probably the best solution.
2010-12-20 08:30:14
#3
By the way, you might want to describe what that actual problem is. There are plenty of experts on these forums who might be able to help out.
2010-12-20 08:58:28
#4
Basically they don't use the tools wisely, IMO and they often mark the same correction twice, with nothing written in the comment box. So when you summarize the comments, there's a list of empty boxes with no instructions.
I have always advocated setting up personalized default properties for the advanced commenting tools so that they're easy to see and easy to read. I also recommend using consistent markup, such as a red 2 pt line to indicate something to be deleted (with "delete" written in the comment box) and a blue headless and tail-less arrow (so that it looks like a line) to indicate an insertion (the various arrow heads and tails can obscure text immediately preceding and following where the "arrow" is placed, which is critical in the types of text I deal with (often single-spaced 9-pt type). And if a comma is to be inserted, type "insert comma" in the comment box rather than just typing ",".
And if, say, a title of a book is supposed to appear "title case," they draw a line through each offending letter and type in the correct character (so if it was lowercase they draw a line through it and type in "D". All by itself, that's very easy to miss. I think it's much smarter to just hi-lite the whole thing and type "set title case" in the comment box.
I also don't think they know that you can copy and paste the text you've typed in the comment boxes (to reuse them instead of retyping over and over) or make them bold or ital.
I'm not asking them to do any more, just to do it "smarter."
dg27
I have always advocated setting up personalized default properties for the advanced commenting tools so that they're easy to see and easy to read. I also recommend using consistent markup, such as a red 2 pt line to indicate something to be deleted (with "delete" written in the comment box) and a blue headless and tail-less arrow (so that it looks like a line) to indicate an insertion (the various arrow heads and tails can obscure text immediately preceding and following where the "arrow" is placed, which is critical in the types of text I deal with (often single-spaced 9-pt type). And if a comma is to be inserted, type "insert comma" in the comment box rather than just typing ",".
And if, say, a title of a book is supposed to appear "title case," they draw a line through each offending letter and type in the correct character (so if it was lowercase they draw a line through it and type in "D". All by itself, that's very easy to miss. I think it's much smarter to just hi-lite the whole thing and type "set title case" in the comment box.
I also don't think they know that you can copy and paste the text you've typed in the comment boxes (to reuse them instead of retyping over and over) or make them bold or ital.
I'm not asking them to do any more, just to do it "smarter."
dg27
2010-12-20 09:48:37
#5
I also recommend using consistent markup, such as a red 2 pt line to indicate something to be deleted (with "delete" written in the comment box) and a blue headless and tail-less arrow (so that it looks like a line) to indicate an insertion (the various arrow heads and tails can obscure text immediately preceding and following where the "arrow" is placed, which is critical in the types of text I deal with (often single-spaced 9-pt type).
Why aren't they using the specific markup tools - we have delete, insert and replace text annotations, each of which places the correct icon on the document and have an associated text field. By using these instead of sticky notes you can also re-apply the changes back into the supported types of original document (Word and AutoCAD).
2010-12-20 10:21:40
#6
That's what I'm dealing with right now...thanks.
If the files you receive from your clients are not usable, why not provide them with some constructive feedback about it? You can explain to them that it will improve both your and their productivity.
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