Change Bars and Document Amendments
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5.10 - Change Bars and Document Amendments


Change bars are shown for parts of the document designated with the CHANGED element. This can appear anywhere that normal text is allowed (as shown by the %text; entity reference in the DTD):

<changed id=z34>text including some changes<changed idref=z34>
The same element*1 is used to designate the start and end of changes, using matched ID and IDREF attribute values. This mechanism avoids syntactic problems that would arise from using a conventional start and end tag pair, as changes to a document can span different levels of the document's formal structure. Additional attributes may be used with the CHANGED element to hold related details, e.g. BY, WHEN, WHY, WHAT.

In legal documents and amendments to proposed legislation, there is often the need to show parts of the text as being removed or added to the document. This is commonly shown using strike-through and underlining respectively. The REMOVED and ADDED tags are provided for this purpose:

<P>This bill would require the Legislative Counsel, with the advice of
the Joint Rules Committee of the Senate and Assembly, to make 
available to the public by means of access by way of <removed>computer
modem</removed> <added>the largest nonproprietary, nonprofit 
cooperative public computer network,</added> specified information 
concerning bills, the proceedings of the houses and committees of the
Legislature, statutory enactments, and the California Constitution.
Which might be displayed as:

Color enhancements may be used to further distinguish the amendments, e.g. red lines for strike-through. This mechanism is not intended for representing revision histories, which are better served by traditional change control mechanisms.


HTML+ Discussion Document - November 8, 1993

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