Any guildelines for proofreading.

Best and fastest way to proceed?

[tomda]

Hi,

I have a problem. I am not yet found the best tool/way to proceed to do fast and efficient proofreading.

Now, I run a website PHP/CSS. It has many databases and contents is picked in different places (databases, HTML, include, etc...). Also the print layout in different to what is seen on screen -> I CAN'T USE THE PRINT LAYOUT

I have tried to use PDF to get the screen on PDF document. But it is time consuming and PDF is not best to type, do corrections and compare -> PRINT+ALT+SCREEN or PDF: TOO LONG AND NOT FRIENDLY

In fact, the only software I know which can do compare or show corrections in different colour is Word. But as you may know, Word is definitely not the software to use for copy/paste to HTML document (e.g. special characters).

-> Is there any extension in Firefox or Opera that can show all the text of the source code (alt and title including), with possibility to save the output as a new HTML page for correction.
The "emulate text browser" in Opera is very nice but I can't save what is on screen (therefore don't have an electronic copy). The only way is to print!

I thought I could the source code and trim HTML elements to get the text but with software I could use so that an third person can easily do the correction (in another color), retunr the doc so that I can just copy/paste and correct the HTML. So what's the best and most efficient way to proofread and correct HTML pages.

Thanks

[physics]

There may indeed be a firefox extension but you can do without it.
Do File->Save Page As
Web Page, complete
Then open the saved .html page with Macromedia Dreamweaver (or any other .html editor that has spell check for the text in the html) and do Shift+F7 to spell check.
Then you'll have spell checked HTML.
I'm not sure if this is what you really need though because if the text is getting pulled out of a database then just fixing what you see in the final page will not really fix the problem ... you have to go into the database to fix text pulled from there.

[tomda]

I'm not sure if this is what you really need

Not really, but thanks for trying...

Because the proof is not done by me but by a third person (who may be a total newbie regarding HTML), the best method I have found so far is to print the Opera "Emulate text browser"...
-> INCONVENIENT: Because corrections can only be done on paper.

I though there would other applications doing the job?

[rocknbil]

Well, the content comes from somewhere, so wherever it comes from is where it needs to be spell checked and corrected.

Homesite also has robust spell check tools, often I (lazily) copy the content from a browser or input field and paste it in a HomeSite document and run spell check. But you're doing the same thing with Word. IMHO, one way or the other, it's going to be inconvenient and you're going to have to pay or take more time than you'd hope as it's a tedious process no matter how you slice it.

guildelines

LOL . . . was this intentional? :-)

[tomda]

I am back on this topic!

Because English is not my native language, my main problem is not spellcheck but my text in general. So, my text definitely needs revision by a third person.

Again, the best tool I have found so far is the "text-emulate browser" in Opera but the printed page looks ugly (e.g. letters overlapping) and I can't

Now, I have tried to look for an extension in FF, I found the Yellowpipe links. But it doesn't work in localhost!

Why is there any "text-browser emulator" for MS-DOS. All the one I found are Unix (Lynx, links, elinks, browserla, w3m)?

Now, the only solution I found is to use PHP:
- save html page as txt file
- open txt file, remove tags but keep alt/title text
- save output

[angelos]

There's also one more aspect of proofreading to consider. There may be a tool to check if the text is literate in terms of grammar and spelling, but is there a tool to detect stylistic lapses. A machine can find spelling mistakes but it can't get what just a human brain may catch.