(j3.2006) 007 formatting

[Malcolm Cohen]

Van Snyder said:
> Here it is again(?).

It seems to have arrived this time.  Ta.

> > > > The attachment shows one page with paragraph numbers, line numbers, and
> > > > decorated page footer.

Right.  It's rather horrible.  Unacceptably ugly.

It is my view that having both paragraph and line numbers together is
unacceptably ugly.  And there is no point in doing it.  There is only
a point in having one or the other.

I'd certainly like to give paragraph numbers a try, but I am not
entirely convinced that 07-007r1 is when we should try it.  As mentioned
before, the obvious time is the working draft that will be a WG5 document.

The ugliness can be fixed easily (I surmise), just:
 (a) get rid of the line numbers;
 (b) lose the parentheses around the paragraph numbers;
 (c) use the same font, or *maybe* one point bigger, than the one
     we are currently using for line numbers (I'd think that
     exactly the same font should be fine);
 (d) place the paragraph numbers where the line numbers currently go.

And a final comment on "precision" with long paragraphs: we already
have this problem with Notes and line numbers, and can resolve it the
same way, viz [128:7] paragraph number 7 on page 128, [128:7+0] the
first line of said paragraph, [128:7+1] the next line etc.

And another final comment on precision and long paragraphs: in
some/many/all of these the real problem is the poor exposition.
Having line numbers available doesn't help that.

Furthermore, if the paragraph in question contains lots of similar
nearly-repeated text (making an edit confusing to understand without
line numbers) it is still confusing when the editor gets to it.  There
are no line numbers in the LaTeX source.

Indeed, having to give an extra couple of words of context in an edit
because of the lack of line numbers would be a GOOD THING!!!!!

Cheers,
-- 
........................Malcolm Cohen (malcolm at nag-j.co.jp), Nihon NAG, Tokyo.