There are some places in the text that appear to be originally hyperlinked, but whose hyperlinks are not present in the .pdf. For example, footnote 21.
In general, the paper needs a technical editor.
EDIT: The lack of hyperlinks is clearly something on my end. I apologize for jumping to conclusions.
Do you mean editing done by the publishers? I don’t know anything about that domain.
As far as the writing of academic papers goes, I know a few groups that maintain a CVS, but some portion of mathematicians wouldn’t be technical enough to run one. Of the examples I know, two groups only use a CVS because their PI told them to, over much groaning.
I was just struck how this is a perfect example where the efficient flow would go ‘see problem->fix problem->submit pull request’, rather than having to post here and hoping someone sees it and acts on it.
It occurs to me that the person who makes revision control easy in the same way that social websites made having your own website easy will also make a billion dollars. Dropbox is both a good example of success and a good example of how much more could be done (trying to use dropbox for proper revision control is something I’ve seen attempted and it is not pretty).
It occurs to me that the person who makes revision control easy in the same way that social websites made having your own website easy will also make a billion dollars.
Hell yeah. I have successfully explained to a bunch of not-very-technical managers why they would want version control: “Have you ever spent three days editing the wrong version of a document?” Wide eyes, all slowly nod. Once they understood what it was for, they would have crawled across broken glass for version control. (And since we were using ClearCase, they did pretty much that!)
“Track changes” in Word solves a little of the problem from the other end.
I would anticipate that a github-like approach to editing would get you decent coverage of “local” editing issues (e.g., this hyperlink business) while not obtaining decent coverage of “global” editing issues (e.g., the use of “counter^3-argument”, “counter^4-argument” in some places and “counter-counter-counter-argument” in another).
A lot of this just boils down to having an acceptable style guide that an editor can enforce without worrying too much about taking every issue to the author for approval.
I like the way you’re approaching the problem. However, I think the temptation for a familiar conclusion is too great and that you might be missing some possibilities.
See:
A lot of this just boils down to having an acceptable style guide that an editor can enforce without worrying >too much about taking every issue to the author for approval.
The solution you’re putting forth suggests that there needs to be a single person in charge of coalescing the many suggestions and edits.
But the great thing about version control is the ability to branch and tag. There could be an arbitrary number of editors who each have their own branch and set of improvements that they are working on—where non-editor contributors could switch branches and commit changes specific to that branch’s needs.
In the end, all branches would need to merge into the trunk. This process doesn’t necessarily need a single editor either.
One person’s “familiar conclusion” is another’s “best practices”, I suppose.
The solution you’re putting forth suggests that there needs to be a single person in charge of coalescing the many suggestions and edits.
Not really. Many suggestions and edits put forth by random people, e.g., here, aren’t edits that I think an editor should really make. Nor do I really think a single person is necessary; again, a well-defined style guide would go a long way.
I understand how CVSes work, and I have no problem with collaborative editing. But papers are not coding projects. There are a lot of global things going on that need to happen correctly. Even open source projects tend to have lead developers, no?
MIRI’s LaTeX document template uses the /href command to hyperlink text and styles links (both internal and external) using the pdfboarderstyle specification from Abode. We aren’t doing anything unusual.
Links are working (and styled) for me in OS X Preview and Adobe Reader 10.1.6, on OS 10.8.3. They even work in Chrome’s pdf viewer which currently doesn’t support pdfboarderstyle, i.e., the text is linked even though there is no underline or box to indicate that it is.
I suspect something fishy is going on with your Reader install . . .
Also, to clarify Luke’s comments, we have a dedicated technical editor (who I have been very impressed with so far), and the papers are reviewed by a couple other people (once they have been typeset) before they are published. I’d be interested to hear about (possibly more appropriate through PM or email) other things in this document that made you think we didn’t have a technical editor.
EDIT: I should clarify that the editing and proofreading I’m talking about is done once the content has been finalized. See a definition of technical editing here.
EDIT: I’m no longer sure that sending all of that over a PM (which I unwisely forgot to retain) was such a great idea. Your edit makes it sound like my objections weren’t really under the aegis of “technical editing”, but I don’t recall objecting to anything that doesn’t fall under that objection. Anyone who doubts my sincerity, please feel free to PM me.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that at all. I just reread my message an it occurred to me that it might not be clear to everyone what technical editing was.
There are some places in the text that appear to be originally hyperlinked, but whose hyperlinks are not present in the .pdf. For example, footnote 21.
In general, the paper needs a technical editor.
EDIT: The lack of hyperlinks is clearly something on my end. I apologize for jumping to conclusions.
Tangent: Why isn’t editing of academic papers done on github or another revision control platform?
MIRI uses Git to track edits for all documents it publishes with it’s official template.
Do you mean editing done by the publishers? I don’t know anything about that domain.
As far as the writing of academic papers goes, I know a few groups that maintain a CVS, but some portion of mathematicians wouldn’t be technical enough to run one. Of the examples I know, two groups only use a CVS because their PI told them to, over much groaning.
I was just struck how this is a perfect example where the efficient flow would go ‘see problem->fix problem->submit pull request’, rather than having to post here and hoping someone sees it and acts on it.
It occurs to me that the person who makes revision control easy in the same way that social websites made having your own website easy will also make a billion dollars. Dropbox is both a good example of success and a good example of how much more could be done (trying to use dropbox for proper revision control is something I’ve seen attempted and it is not pretty).
Hell yeah. I have successfully explained to a bunch of not-very-technical managers why they would want version control: “Have you ever spent three days editing the wrong version of a document?” Wide eyes, all slowly nod. Once they understood what it was for, they would have crawled across broken glass for version control. (And since we were using ClearCase, they did pretty much that!)
“Track changes” in Word solves a little of the problem from the other end.
I would anticipate that a github-like approach to editing would get you decent coverage of “local” editing issues (e.g., this hyperlink business) while not obtaining decent coverage of “global” editing issues (e.g., the use of “counter^3-argument”, “counter^4-argument” in some places and “counter-counter-counter-argument” in another).
A lot of this just boils down to having an acceptable style guide that an editor can enforce without worrying too much about taking every issue to the author for approval.
I like the way you’re approaching the problem. However, I think the temptation for a familiar conclusion is too great and that you might be missing some possibilities.
See:
The solution you’re putting forth suggests that there needs to be a single person in charge of coalescing the many suggestions and edits.
But the great thing about version control is the ability to branch and tag. There could be an arbitrary number of editors who each have their own branch and set of improvements that they are working on—where non-editor contributors could switch branches and commit changes specific to that branch’s needs.
In the end, all branches would need to merge into the trunk. This process doesn’t necessarily need a single editor either.
Cheers
One person’s “familiar conclusion” is another’s “best practices”, I suppose.
Not really. Many suggestions and edits put forth by random people, e.g., here, aren’t edits that I think an editor should really make. Nor do I really think a single person is necessary; again, a well-defined style guide would go a long way.
I understand how CVSes work, and I have no problem with collaborative editing. But papers are not coding projects. There are a lot of global things going on that need to happen correctly. Even open source projects tend to have lead developers, no?
The hyperlink in footnote 21 works for me. It goes here. What happens when you click on “this online post” in footnote 21?
We did use a couple editors on the paper, like we do with all our papers.
Nothing. Adobe Reader 11.0.2 on Windows 7.
Yeah, I saw the percent signs were interpreted correctly. It’s a work in progress.
MIRI’s LaTeX document template uses the /href command to hyperlink text and styles links (both internal and external) using the pdfboarderstyle specification from Abode. We aren’t doing anything unusual.
Links are working (and styled) for me in OS X Preview and Adobe Reader 10.1.6, on OS 10.8.3. They even work in Chrome’s pdf viewer which currently doesn’t support pdfboarderstyle, i.e., the text is linked even though there is no underline or box to indicate that it is.
I suspect something fishy is going on with your Reader install . . .
Also, to clarify Luke’s comments, we have a dedicated technical editor (who I have been very impressed with so far), and the papers are reviewed by a couple other people (once they have been typeset) before they are published. I’d be interested to hear about (possibly more appropriate through PM or email) other things in this document that made you think we didn’t have a technical editor.
EDIT: I should clarify that the editing and proofreading I’m talking about is done once the content has been finalized. See a definition of technical editing here.
PM sent.
EDIT: I’m no longer sure that sending all of that over a PM (which I unwisely forgot to retain) was such a great idea. Your edit makes it sound like my objections weren’t really under the aegis of “technical editing”, but I don’t recall objecting to anything that doesn’t fall under that objection. Anyone who doubts my sincerity, please feel free to PM me.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that at all. I just reread my message an it occurred to me that it might not be clear to everyone what technical editing was.
Your PM was indeed about technical edits.
BTW you can see all PMs you sent by visiting, http://lesswrong.com/message/sent/
Ohh! Thanks. I hadn’t noticed that feature.