RE: endnote-interest-digest V1 #2444

Hi Ruth (/Yoshi/et al.),

You're ABSOLUTELY RIGHT to warn everybody not to use track changes while
using Endnote, but the reason is probably a little less complex than
existential paradoxes might imply.

I believe I'm paraphrasing Terry Pratchet when I say that there's
actually a little-known third state Schrodinger's cat can be in aside
from alive or dead, and that's _very pissed off from being locked in a
box_. Something similar might be said of Word.

The first thing to know is that word's track-changes feature, when
turned on, keeps a list of every single change you (or a script
pretending to be
you) make, what the text was before, and what it is after. Also, if you
make a change, reverse it manually (without using undo) and then make it
again, word remembers 3 changes, not 1.

The second thing to know is how many changes are involved in what seems
to be a very simple task. You press Alt+2 or Alt+3, and voila, there's
the shiny new reference and/or reformatted bibliography, but if you look
below the surface, you can see that there's more to it.

When you insert a reference into endnote, Endnote inserts the text
{Smith,
2008 #456}. An add-in in word, written by ISI, recognizes this as a
citation and inserts a 'smart-tag' to mark it as such. A third script,
also written by ISI, then
	- inserts the text of your in-text/footnote citation
	- formats this text up with italic, underline, etc., as
appropriate, one piece of formatting at a time (i.e., if your citation
has italics in the title of the article and in the journal title, plus
bold for the volume, that's three pieces of formatting.
	- reformats the bibliography as below.

When you reformat the bibliography, word will go through each citation
in your text/footnotes. The ones it sees are untouched it leaves alone,
but if anything needs changing, it will
	- delete the citation
	- insert a new one
	- apply the formatting, one piece at a time Then it 
	- deletes your bibliography
	- inserts a paragraph
	- sets the indents (separately: first line and left indents)
	- sets the line-spacing
	- sets (in turn) the space before and after
	- inserts the bibliography text
	- formats this bibliography text up with italics and formatting
as needed, one piece of formatting at a time.

*Each of these steps is 'tracked' as a 'change' by word.* If I reformat
the bibliography of a document with two citations in it, with a simple
style like Chicago, I get 15 actions, and the more citations, the more
actions:
when I reformat the bibliography in my dissertation, I have several
hundred actions. If I reformat again, word remembers the changes all
over again.

It doesn't take long before tracking all the changes takes up a great
deal more size than the document itself. Word's problem is, in fact,
that the document gets too big and complex and, unsurprisingly, it
crashes. (This is Word's version of very pissed off!)

As the problem is inherent in the ways 'track changes' and Endnote work,
it's not going to go away with a change of version of either product.

The only real way of dealing with this, as far as I'm concerned, is to
turn the track changes feature off. If you REALLY need it on, keep CWYW
turned off ALL THE TIME, and ensure you turn the track changes feature
OFF while you reformat the bibliography.

Michael