How Do I Put Revision Bars In A Document

[llyons]

I am using DITA in Arbortext Editor version 6.1, datecode M020.

What do I need to do to make revision bars show up when I generate a pdf of a book?

I went to the help menu, and it says to open Modify Attributes and to choose an option from the revisionflag field.  The options are supposed to be "added", "changed", "deleted", and"off".

There is no revisionflag field.

There is a rev field under the Other tab, but it does not have dropdown options.  But I tried "changed" inside a step element.  No go.  Does not work. No change bar showed up in the pdf.

Not only that, but it would be an understatement to say that having to do this manually for every change I make to a book would be a ridiculous increase in workload.  Isn't there some way to have this done automatically?

[GarethOakes]

Is this the case that you would like to indicate changes in final print/PDF deliverables? I'm assuming that, otherwise you could use the Arbortext change tracking features to mark changes.

DITA-OT has support for change bars using the @rev attribute, this seems to be a good standard way to indicate revision information. How else would you know what has changed? Or is it the case you would expect the release version of the DITA to be diffed against the previous release version to automatically compile the revision information?

Regards change bars in Arbortext, I know they're supported, I don't know if they are supported with DITA and I'm not actually in front of Arbortext right now to check. Maybe someone else who has tried can chime in.

[llyons]

Yes, I want to indicate changes in the PDF so reviewers do not have to review the entire book.  How do I do that?  A step-by-step explanation would be appreciated.

I have tried opening Modify Attributes in an element and putting "changed" in the rev field.  Nothing happens.

It also strikes me that if this is the way it is supposed to be done, that is incredibly labor intensive.  Not only would you have to manually add the attribute to each and every element you change in the book, you would have to go back and undo each and every attribute before starting the next iteration of the book.

In FrameMaker, for example, one just activates change bars for an entire book, and wherever you type something, the change bars appear automatically.  Then, when the pdf is finalized, you just clear change bars throughout the book with a single command.

Is there no way to do this in Arbortext?  If there isn't, this is a huge oversight.

[GarethOakes · Accepted solution]

Hi Luke,

Change bars are definitely supported by Arbortext. The thing is, they are not enabled in any of the out-of-the-box document types, including DITA. There is an open idea to implement such support for DITA: Add revision bar functionality to .ditaval files

The "step by step" to enable change bars is quite complicated. You would need to extend the basic DITA stylesheets (using Arbortext Styler) to add support for the @rev attribute. You would then find that Styler has no user interface to the change bars feature, so you would have to add "Edited Source" for handling the @rev attribute. This Edited Source would require you to write Javascript code (for APP engine) in order to enable change bar display.

Here at GPSL (www.gpsl.co) we are a PTC partner who specialize in this type of work. We can configure, customize and integrate Arbortext software to meet the most demanding business requirements. We are also able to provide training for this type of work.

Cheers,

Gareth

[llyons]

Thank you, Gareth.

Wow.  I am stunned at this oversight on the part of Arbortext.  Change bars are an industry standard in technical publications.

It is ridiculous the process is that complicated.

[GarethOakes]

Sorry I didn't respond to your bit about the Framemaker equivalent functionality. Yes you could implement this type of workflow in Arbortext Editor, and we have done it for other customers, but this is not an out-of-the-box feature.