ForComment: Electronic Red Pen for Editors
If you produce documents, chances are pretty good that you don’t work alone. Perhaps you work with others to produce business plans or reports. Or maybe you’re a writer, submitting copy to an editor for comments or revisions. Even if you just write business letters, there is a good chance that you’ll want to run them by a colleague.
In the days before word processing, the review process was clear. You passed the document around and let everyone mark it up with a red pen. When they were done, you decided on the revisions and had the document retyped.
Word processing, however, makes things a little more confusing. Although drafts can be printed out and circulated, the original exists not on paper but in electronic form. Any comments or revisions must eventually be retyped.
One solution is to pass around a floppy disk with the document, and ask people to use a word processing program to make their comments in the document itself. But that can make matters worse. You would lose control over the document and wouldn’t be able to tell who proposed which revisions. What’s more, everyone making a comment would need to have the same word processing program.
This is becoming more of an issue now that an increasing number of organizations are tying their PCs together with local area networks. Such networks allow a group of users to share resources, including hard disks and the files on them, but don’t solve many of the basic problems in making revisions electronically. What’s needed is the electronic equivalent of a yellow “Post-it Note” or a red pen.
Enter ForComment from Broderbund Software of San Rafael, Calif. ForComment, which runs on IBM PC and its compatibles, comes with four disks, including a utility disk for setting up printers and a demo/tutorial disk for learning the program. The working part of the system is the “Author” disk and the “Reviewer” disk.
The author disk is designed for the person in charge of the review, not necessarily the person who wrote the original. That person gets to determine which reviewers are permitted to read and comment on the document. The reviewer disk can be copied so that up to 15 reviewers--who exchange files by passing along floppy disks, using the same local area network or transferring files via a telephone line--can comment.
After starting the author program, you “import” a word processing document into ForComment. The program saves the file under a new name, so the original document is unchanged. The person with the author disk then grants access to a list of reviewers and can assign each a secret password as a safety precaution. This is especially important on a network system where you may wish to keep files out of the hands of co-workers.
The top line of the screen displays a menu structured like the one on Lotus 1-2-3. You can access a command by moving the cursor to the menu item and pressing the “Enter” key. Or you can type in the first letter of the command.
To move through the document, you use the arrows or the “Page Up” and “Page Down” keys. When you find a section that you wish to comment on, you press “C” (for comment) and the cursor jumps to a window at the bottom of the screen where you can type comments. When you’re done, you press a key to return to the main document. A small dot appears at the left of the line where comments are made as a signal to those participating in the review. Whenever the cursor is moved to that dot, comment appears in the lower window.
There also is a feature for reviewers who want to try rewriting part of a document. Blocks of text, up to 4,000 characters long, can be moved into a special revision window for changes. The revision can then be left in the lower window or “swapped” into the document itself. The original text remains available, so it’s always possible to reject the revisions.
It’s even possible for reviewers to make comments on each other’s comments, with a feature known as a “dialog.”
The program has a “find” feature that allows you to search for words or phrases, or locate comments and revisions. It also has context-sensitive help screens. In other words, pressing “F1” (Function Key 1) brings up a help screen that pertains to the activity you are currently performing.
When the review is complete, the author’s disk can be used to “export” the document to its original word processing format. The reviewer’s disk can neither export a file nor generate a new ForComment document.
Typically, software publishers stress that it is illegal for programs to be distributed to more than one person. But ForComment is designed as a multiuser program, and Broderbund encourages you to copy and distribute the reviewer’s disk. In fact, the company includes several copies of a pamphlet-size manual for reviewers. Users who buy the $195 basic program, however, aren’t allowed to share the author disk. A local area network version, which sells for $995, gives up to 16 users access to both the author and reviewer software.
As a writer, I love to get feedback from readers. But you’re sitting in front of a newspaper, not a computer screen. So, if you have any comments, send them along, assuming that you can find your red pen and yellow Post-it Notes.
