xml-dev - Re: Improved writing -- who's going to pay for it?

[tpassin@home.com]

Linda van den Brink wrote -

> > Readers are invited to submit comments on specs, but readers are not
> > invited to participate in the development of specs as
> > participants.  I'd
> > suggest that this barrier doesn't exactly encourage readers
> > to take on copy
> > editing W3C specs as a gift to an organization that isn't
> > exactly inclusive.
>
> True. And another reason I just thought of out why it wouldn't work is,
that
> a reader who has difficulty understanding a section of a w3c spec would
also
> have difficulty suggesting a rewrite. Whereas a tech writer, who is inside
> the organization, would presumably have good communication lines to the
> editors of specs and could ask them 'what is meant here' and THEN come up
> with a good rewrite.
>
It could actually be useful - you would rewrite write the parts you
inderstand as clearly as possible and the part you didn't understand, you
would write according to your best understanding.  Also remark that you
weren't sure your version was correct. The spec editor would be impelled to
consider reworking the original since there would be a clear but wrong
version in front of his(/her) eyes.

A lot of the difficulties are at a very mundane level.  Too many
run-together clauses, too many chains of qualifiers, too many exceptions,
make it hard for anyone to puzzle out the intended meaning unless you
already know what it is.  These kinds of things can be helped by a person
who doesn't know the material very well.

Tom Passin