Manued is a proofreading method for text. This method is general for all kind of text, however, the motivation of developing this method is proofreading for electric text, especially text on Email. There is some kind of difficulty in exchanging manuscripts via Email for fixing them. This method provides one solution for easy fixing text. This method was proposed by TAKEUCHI Ikuo at 39th programming symposium in Japan. If you feel some kind of trouble with fixing a manuscript via Email, I think this method can help you.
Manued supporting program is a program to support proofreading with the manued method. The author implements a program, named ``manued.el''. This program is for the emacs after version 19.34. Other implementations are possible but now only desired. ``Manued.el'' has next features.
Email is a very convenient communication method. Because Email is mail, it is not interrupt other people's work like telephone does. Moreover, it is high-speed and there is not so long time lag, it always takes only a few seconds or several minutes until reach to a recipient. So, since this feature, many people use this system.
The author needs to exchange a manuscript with collaborators or editors via Email. However, in the proofreading point of view, Email has some weak points.
Presently, exchanging a manuscript for proofreading via Email can not expect the easiness like doing on the paper with red ink. Especially, Email environment limits the kinds of usable characters. Manued method also concerns such environment.
We always fix sentences as follows.
The Three Laws of Robotics by Azimuth.
^^^^^^^
This may be a mistake with Asimov. And the number of
laws was changed from three to four, isn't it?
1. A robot may not injure a robot, nor through inaction
^^^^^ This must be "human being"
allow a human being to come to harm.
This conventional method indicated correcting position with a symbol `^' and proofreading plans with a text. This conventional method always needs much input work and some kind of ambiguous is included in it, because proofreading plans are directed by natural language. The main problem of this conventional method comes from this ambiguous. Even if the manuscript is already inputed in a computer, this ambiguousness interferes automatic extraction of the revised document. Furthermore, information of correcting position with `^' sometimes may be no mean when the mail reading environment is changed. For example, someone reads a manuscript with proportional font and the other one does not. In many environment, people can not recognize the proofreading position of next paragraph, even if this text is totally same as above but <pre> tags. If you can, please confirm this source.
The Three Laws of Robotics by Azimuth. ^^^^^^^ This may be a mistake with Asimov. And the number of laws was changed from three to four, isn't it?
1. A robot may not injure a robot, nor through inaction ^^^^^ This must be "human being" allow a human being to come to harm.
In manued method, some editting command is involved in the plane text for indicating how to fix the sentences. For example, [A/B] is one of the manued commands. This meaning is ``delete A, insert B''. Using this notation, above paragraph is written as follows.
The Three Laws of Robotics by [Azimuth/Asimov].
1. A robot may not injure a [robot/human], nor through inaction allow a human being to come to harm.
Moreover, the manued method preparing the commands for writing comments and swap words. This method defines exact designation of the correcting region and how to change the text. Therefore, there is no fail to miss the correcting position. And there is no mis-recognition of the proofreading text that is a comment or a substitution. In particular, one of the advantages of manued method is independence from environment. We should only assume that the manuscript is written as a text file.
I think many people wonder that the `[]' symbols are already used in documents like TeX and LaTeX, and you think this will be not work. To solve this problem, manued method defines a header to redefine manued symbols. You can vary this header at each document. (More detail is in the manued manual.) Any strings not including white space can be a manued symbol. Until now, some people use following manued symbols.
Manued method also defines escape symbol to escape manued symbol. For example, if you want to write `[]' characters as non manued command, you can write `~[~]'. In default, character `~' is escape symbol of manued. Escape symbol is also be able to redefine with other strings and of course you can escape `escape symbol itself', like `~~'. However, too many escapes are harmful for proofreading. Please redefine manued symbols for easy reading.
Manued method only assumes there is a text editor. However if there is a supporting tool, this method is more powerful for fixing electric documents. So, I implement `manued-minor-mode' on Emacs. You can use next functions on Emacs with `manued-minor-mode'.
Since manued method does not care environment, assisting tools for manued method can be implemented on other editors. Just only because I always use the emacs, I implemented the tool on the emacs. So, please inform me if you implemented an assistance tool for manued method on other environment. Examples of demanded environments and tools are as follows.
Manued ML is the place to talk about proofreading for electric manuscripts. The article examples are manued.el program, other implementations, other proofreading method and so on.
(Please read mail addresses with deleting .nicht.spam and substitute " at " to @.)