Having one document is nice, especially for people carrying tablets and Kindles (which is becoming more and more common). It is obviously an editing nightmare, though.

It seems the medium (which is no doubt Word or some similar program) is the problem, not the end product. Searching for software to accommodate us should be the focus.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

Word and PDF Conversion is a nightmare. I once had to write/edit a book with a lot of tables and diagrams this way. Everything you do looks dandy, but when you try to print it, all sort of problems arise.

Since the document is complicated, another program (which is table and picture-friendly) would probably be preferable.

/Fredmans

Dave, the point of the Army Compendium is to have one go-to destination for army lists for newbies and us grognards too. It is to contain stable lists and and have no changes to the lists each year.

However, insisting on keeping serious and known mistakes that are only in there due to transciption errors by poor overworked Dobbsy is frankly massively counter productive. You might as well not have a compendium if you insist on keeping known errors each year.

In addition, the army compendium was supposed to go up on a website along with the FAQ.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

What in this:


Suggests this:

?
I think the elephant in the room is the fact that the army "champions" evidently don't have their proofreading act together, producing all this extra work.

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

I agree.

I need a book that I can use for X period of time and know that it is correct rather than worrying if there is a friday night update before a saturday game.



Thats a very good point, isnt there army champions for each list?(i could be wrong but i thought there were) shouldnt the burden of proofing weigh mostly on their shoulders?

I am more than happy to proof an army list but I dont have a background in what each list is supposed to have or the points. If there was a correct master document and it had to be compared to this document i could do that. Without that though unless it is a glaring error then a newbie like myself isnt going to pick it up.

There are champions for every list. Presumably, they know their individual lists better than anyone else and are best able to spot errors. I find it hard to believe that the pages and pages of errors cited in this thread are all due to transcription problems. Typos are one thing, but major errors should be long expunged by now (i.e. before Dobbsy even received the lists).

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

True, sometimes though when someone looks at a document for so long it just blurs and you need a fresh set of eyes to pick up errors.

Sometimes you cant see the forest for the trees

...

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AFK with real life, still checking PMs

Reality check: there is no way to find all the mistakes. At some point we have to say, "It will do."

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

... not really, no

if someone finds a mistake, the person in charge of the project (perhaps the suppliments ERC guy, perhaps the rules ERC guy) updates the pdf, includes a date stamp, and posts the new version along with the changes made

we may never find every mistake, we might, but thats all the more reason to fix mistakes when we find them, not sit on our hands for a year or four before correcting them. noone is suggesting that you go over every list with a fine toothed comb, but when a mistake is found, it isnt that big a deal to fix.

formatting, column sizes, font spacing, that is all perhaps stuff that can wait to be addressed (but doesnt have to)

updating lists throughout the year as changes occur, that probably doesnt need to be done either (though it could be. people who want the "2012 edition" printed out and bound in their notebook, can do so at the start of each year. changes can be printed out piecemeal as needed by those who want to do so.)

but fixing typos, mis-transcriptions, and general incorrect information within the document should be handled as a priority

the only reason to say "it will do" on a self-published web-based document is laziness.

and things like "this unit, present in several lists, is missing an entire weapon" represents a mistake that should be rectified ASAP

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~Every Tool Is A Weapon, If You Hold It Right~

Well, I agree with all of the above points
Basically we need to be able to download and print the Compendium; this after all was one of the main ideas behind the work and all the debates about formating and content.
However, we also need to correct any typos as they are found and yet find a way to keep everyone's version up to date. So why not agree to a publishing schedule where the latest version of the compendium would be made available? Here's how it would work:-

1. Lets continue for a period picking out typos etc;
   Champions should be the final judge on the correct version of their own list, and ensure that each army list has the correct version printed in the Compendium
2. After a period (perhaps the end of Feb?) we declare V1.0 complete for printing and playing purposes.
3. We continue to correct typos and periodically (every 2 months?) issue the latest version; V1.1, V1.2 etc. These versions will contain a page listing the units where typos were fixed.
4. Army list development will continue separately following on from the list version numbers in the Compendium. ACs should try to retain the same format and style where possible to assist in editing the Compendium.
5. After a period (1 year?) the Compendium will be updated with the latest versions of Army lists and issued as V2.0.
   Indeed this approach would potentially also allow those lists that achieve early approval to have their status updated in one of the six interim Compendium versions

As to tools, I would suggest using those that are more commonly available and understood (eg Word) so that the various AC's can assist in maintaining their own lists thereby reducing the burden on Dobbsy (or whoever collates the Compendium).

Sounds like a good plan moving forward Ginger.

Thanks to all involved in getting this ready, in particular Dobbsy it seems. A long held goal realised at last.

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http://hordesofthings.blogspot.co.nz/

...

...Says the man not doing the work.

I'm not suggesting leaving glaring errors, but it isn't worth having a person volunteer scouring the document for weeks on end. Best to let it sit, build up a bunch of corrections, then make them all at once. Maybe a year is too long, but calling people lazy because they don't hop when you call will not endear you to anyone.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

...to the person who supposedly volunteered to do the work :P

of course, right now, neither of us are "doing the work"

i'm not saying we, you, or anyone, need to scour the document for weeks on end. that method of testing clearly doesnt work anyway. luckily, now that the document is out there in the wild, many eyes will be upon it, and people will report errors when they find them.

i'm not saying we need to catch all the errors. if an error lasts two years before anyone notices, it quite probably isnt an important error. but we should strive to catch all the errors, or at the very least, correct any errors we do catch.

what i am saying is when someone says "here is an error i have found" the response be "oh crap, i'll fix that"
not "it'll do" or "there comes a time when we need to accept we'll never catch all the errors" or "we'll fix it next year"
... especially not two weeks into the release

monthly "minor typo fixing" (things like "warlord critical says banelord") updates would be good. near immediate "someone left off one of the gargants arms" updates would be good. yearly "new lists and lists graduating up the chain of completion" updates would be good.

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~Every Tool Is A Weapon, If You Hold It Right~