In answer to a specific suggestion, I typed:
I have done this kind of work, have automated it, am in business, and have and do charge for it.
Bowerbird replied:
great!
can you point us to your for-a-fee solution? i would be interested in pricing it. do you have a cost-free demo?
i'd like to see the profit-margin on "a few simple scripts".
You left out some important context: my comment above was a reply to automated "diff", which is NOT something the original poster asked about, so it wasn't covered in my reply to him. If Thad (who started this thread) is looking for a pragmatic solution that can work well for several books, it really is just a few simple scripts. That would make a pretty meager product. Of course annotation can be much more complex, but there's no need to make it so just to deliver some useful content to students. I hate to leave issues hanging, but in your case I make an exception. Folks who are new to the list may find it a bit rude of me not to reply to the many points you raised; folks who have been on awhile or stumbled across the many relevant portions of the archives will understand. -- Cheers, Scott S. Lawton http://Classicosm.com/ - classic books http://ProductArchitect.com/ - consulting