Hi Bill, can you please elaborate a wee bit more your solution because I can't quite figure out how what you propose solves the problem at the moment.
Bill wrote: >Actually, this is an old problem, and not so unusual at all, if I >understand it correctly. A lot of legal material relies on fixed page >boundaries for ongoing publishing, and what is often called "looseleaf" >updates where only the changed pages are updated, printed, and >redistributed. >I think the solution is to look into a composition engine that supports >this kind of pagination, where page boundaries are carefully maintained >version to version. You could then product PDFs for distribution. This statement in conjunction with the problem at hand you seam to suggest that page boundaries can be established abstractly before publishing. That is, page boundaries can be established before the actual rendition of a document/book is made. It seams to me that the sizing of letters, format of the document, not to mention pictures and other device dependent idiosyncrasies are things that are computed at rendition time and that actually has a huge impact on page indexes (page numbers, word location etc). This is actually one of the reasons why organization (including Governments) chose to adopt only one or two electronic formats (PDF or RTF) to keep and distribute sensitive (legal, etc) documents. NOTE: What is your definition for page boundaries? Maybe my lack of understanding is due to the lack of this knowledge. The problem of Austin as far as I understood (if not then I'm rising another problem for witch a solution is require) is how to maintain the same pagination information/setup among multiple devices (paper, HTML, PDA, etc)? After all people refer to information in document in precise terms by stating the (publication (name, author date), chapter or page, paragraph number), if any of these objects do not exist anymore or fluctuate from context to context then such practice cannot be relied in legal terms. Within this scope "loose-leaf versioning" (I'm note sure what this is but I'm guessing here) and "loose-leaf" publishing is irrelevant because neither methods are targeted to solve this problem as far as I can see it. Also I would like to refer back to your statement: >I think the solution is to look into a composition engine that supports >this kind of pagination, where page boundaries are carefully maintained >version to version. Particularly I would like to understand what you mean by: >..where page boundaries are carefully maintained version to version The content of each page do not change from version to version (this is an easy way to maintain boundaries)? Or by maintenance you mean the global computation of indexes (TOC, Index, etc) of a document is made each time a page is changed and published (then again paragraph location may change, so cannot be referred reliably without a QA process)? Please can you clarify? If I'm wrong I need to get back to the drawing board :) All that I'm saying is that what ever technology (CMS) Darrel chooses he needs to implement policies (Standard Operation Procedures for the CMS) based on legal practices that are not within the realm of technology. Within this, choosing a Master Record format (PDF? Or another) that mandates the modus "referus" practice is mandatory. That is for legal reason all references within a legal argumentation must be made to this document not the HTML version published on the site or any other medium. But this fact does not invalidate the usefulness of an HTML or XML version of the same content (one has to provide irrefutable means to demonstrate the word "same"). In fact if when reading an HTML version of the document (pageless) I can click on a paragraph and check it's location within the master record then I can for sure rely on that if policy facilitates this kind of usage. Best regards, Nuno Lopes Independent Consultant -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
