Re: Has anyone reviewed or edited using PDF marked up by Acrobat tools?

[Dick Margulis <margulis -at- fiam -dot- net>]

Jean,

When I do this I use the sticky note tool almost exclusively, rather 
than the various highlighting and freehand tools. I can place the icon 
for the note adjacent to the item I'm commenting on, and then I can move 
the open note window so that it does not interfere with seeing the item.

I find that, as you have discovered, the comments can get a bit wordy 
because of the need to repeat passages for context, but they are also a 
lot more legible than if I scribble on hardcopy.

The other nice feature is that with multiple reviewers you can assign 
each reviewer a note color (for the note icon and frame, not for the 
text) and further identify the note window by the name of the reviewer.

We recently received a PDF of a PowerPoint presentation that someone in 
another company prepared for joint use. This was a consultant who writes 
like one, so we (another reviewer and I) had LOTS of comments. He took 
the reviewed PDF and the original PPT and forwarded them to his firm's 
graphics department. They implemented the requested changes in the PPT 
(and actually did a fair job of it, only missing a few). Overall, I'd 
say it was a fairly smooth process, given that PowerPoint doesn't let 
you track changes and the comment tool is a joke.

For minor edits, as you say, PDF notes are cumbersome. I'd rather see a 
workflow where that kind of edit is handled in the original document by 
a trusted copyeditor, either prior to the review circulation or as a 
final pass before publication, rather than something the author has to 
receive as written comments and choose to implement one by one.

Dick

Jean Hollis Weber wrote: