> And there's a distinction? 'Proofing' is something one does to a
> printer's proof, short of actually reading the darn thing? (Perhaps
> 'proof-glancing' would be a superior coinage, if one wants to make so
> much of the apparent difference.)
The problem is, O Best Beloved, that Greg Stafford is now a Very Old Man, and can remember the Olden Days when you didn't need to use Babbage Engines to produce books.
The last time (before "Hero Wars") that he was solely responsible for checking the printers had got a Chaosium book right (i.e. "proofing" the printers' proof), the job consisted of making sure the margins weren't skewed and pages weren't included upside-down. Because you sent your printers the pages to make the book from, and they made the book for you. Not a lot that could go wrong, and that was mostly mechanical. A proof-glance was sufficient.
He hadn't any inkling, when he sent "Hero Wars" to print, of the problems (e.g. font-substitution and -omission errors) that can and will happen when printers build your books for you from electronic files. He didn't know that nowadays you need to read through what comes back with the assumption that "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong". And it did.
Now, he knows better. I would be most upset if those errors happened again.
As for more blameworthy proofreading cockups (sloppy editing, bad grammar, extraneous material, poor ordering) -- at Tentacles, Greg's cri de coeur was that he either brought out "Hero Wars" when he did, as it then was, or Issaries went under. Meaning no "Hero Wars," ever. Hindsight is wonderful, but we'd all have had *much* more opportunity to exercise it if *that* had happened.
BTW, I understand that the "pages upside-down" / "pages in the wrong order" stuff affected the stapled booklet of handouts from the Deluxe Box, not any of the "sensible" books. Anyone familiar with the tribulations of building booklets from many source documents will easily see how this could happen, especially with a too-modern printer who's not used to this sort of thing. Not likely to happen again. (Solution if it does: Issaries should build booklets the same way they build books, as paginated layout files, and not require the printers to do this for them).
I'm just trying to "understand a little more, and condemn a little less" (to turn John Major on his head, always a pleasure).
:::: Email: <mailto:Nick_Brooke_at_btinternet.com>
Nick
:::: Website: <http://www.btinternet.com/~Nick_Brooke/>
Powered by hypermail