[publican-list] RFC: Supporting RevisionFlag attribute

[Ruediger Landmann]

On 05/05/2010 10:47 AM, Jeffrey Fearn wrote:
> Currently RevisionFlag isn't used by Publican, I think it can be used 
> to  aid reviewing documentation.
>
> http://www.docbook.org/tdg/en/html/ref-elements.html#common.attributes
>
> The idea being that when an author modifies a book, they set the 
> RevisionFlag and if the book is in draft mode then Publican would 
> highlight that tag.
>
> e.g.
>
> RevisionFlag="Changed" might have a yellow background.
> RevisionFlag="Added" might have a green background.
> RevisionFlag="Deleted" might have strike through applied.
>
> This way reviewers would get visual queues about what has happened at 
> the tag level.
>
> It probably makes sense to only use this at the block level, para etc, 
> but I don't see any reason to enforce that usage.
>
> When the book is ready for release, the tags marked as Deleted would 
> need to be deleted by the author, and the remaining RevisionFlag 
> attributes would need to be set to Off, or deleted.
>
> To aid usability we could be new action to delete all RevisionFlag 
> attributes.
>
> e.g. $ publican clear_rev_flags
>

This would definitely useful during the review phase of books. At the 
moment, we're just inserting remarks at the section or chapter level and 
reviewers can only evaluate the changes by comparing the doc 
side-by-side with the old version.

I'd like to have a red background in addition to a strikethrough for 
deleted content, though. I know that I would find material with a 
coloured background easier to locate and assess than material with just 
a strikethrough.

Cheers
Rudi