A couple of things you are missing:
First, the break could come in the middle of a hyphenated word or a ctiation.
Two, you have to deal with footnotes. You would have to place the
footnotes as endnotes. And, some would still like to see footnote ... on
the other hand, perhaps you are just saying to count every line ...
Three, at least in WordPerfect, a hard page would disrupt indentation, so
your program would need to be more clever ... and indentation may be
provide by a style, not an indent code.
Four, the number of lines would quite definitely depend on the font, font
size, whether it was proporptional or not, the hypenating rules, whether
hypehnation is being used, the margins, left and right ....
If one was really bought into a belief system that paragraph numbering
affects the meaning of the text, then one could perhaps created groups of
paragraphs and call them virtual pages. One could define a virtual page
that is between starts at a paragraph break and then continues for to
the first paragraph break that appears after 800 characters into the
virtual page or could even have a random number generator create a
virtual page so no one could say it reflected any human thought etc.
Alan Sugarman
sugarman@panix.com
On Sun, 22 Jan 1995, Cindy Chick wrote:
>
> I'm not a macro expert, but how hard could it be to develop a macro that
> counts the line numbers, and inserts a virtual page designation. You
> would not use the Wordperfect page breaks, or pagination capability for
> the purpose of inserting "virtual pages". You would just count down the
> number of lines (say 60), then insert something like this:
>
> ---------------------------Page #x-------------------------------------
>
> This would not rely on fonts, or anything else "printer" related.
>
> Paragraph numbers would HAVE to be harder, since the macro would have to
> determine what constitutes a paragraph, and couldn't use something as
> simple as line numbers to determine the break.
>
> Am I missing something obvious?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Cindy Chick cchick@netcom.com
> Los Angeles, CA 90017
> -------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Wed, 18 Jan 1995, Alan Sugarman wrote:
>
> > Actually, Koster has pointed out something that I had argued earlier ...
> > which is that a <completely> automated paragraph numbering is more difficult
> > than it sounds ... but, so also is a page numbering macro. If you doubt
> > me, I suggest you download an opnion in WordPerfect form from the 6th
> > Circuit and attempt to insert "hard" page breaks and numbers (hint, you
> > better have the same printer that the Court does and the same fonts).
> >
> > But, a macro that does 99% of the work for paragraph numbering is not a
> > big deal ... one caveat though. There must be an "undelete" capability
> > if the first try is not what one wishes to have. That is why the paragraph
> > numbers should be denoted with angle brackets as in SGML-HTML. Then they
> > can be pulled out.
> >
> > But, how do you write the macro.
> > First, replace all paragraphs symbols with <p>, perhaps even bolded in red.
> > Then, the human person delete all that are not necessary (like before a
> > block indented quote).
> > Then, the next macro replaces the paragraph symbols with numbers like
> > <p=1> etc. This is pretty simple.
> > Then, if before release of the opinion one wishes to make a change, one
> > merely deletes all the bracketed numbers and then starts over again.
> >
> > This is not any harder than running a spelling checker and a cite
> > checker, both of which are in general run on legal opinons before the
> > final version is released.
> >
> > I hypothesise that Colorado has three problems:
> >
> > One, someone said it would be "fully" automated and tried to design
> > something that cannot be done.
> >
> > Two, in order to placate those opposed to the concept, they decided not
> > to tag the paragraph numbers a la SGML HTML making removal of the
> > paragraph numbers something more problematic.
> >
> > Three, there may be a little NIH involved. For some reason, I think
> > that there are a lot of people who would readily provide something that
> > works.
> >
> > HyperLaw hereby offers to provide the Colorado courts with a Word For
> > Windows program that will handle this with dispatch. I hereby volunteer
> > John Lederer to provide a Word Perfect Macro. Maybe even Jamie Love
> > could do it (Greg, what ever gave you the idea that Love was a
> > techno-klutz). I think that Lexis would also provide technical support.
> >
> > The question to Greg would you be in favor of fixing the technical
> > problem or opposed to fixing the technical problem (we assume the problem
> > is one of technique, and not something else).
> >
> >
> > Alan Sugarman
> > HyperLaw
> > sugarman@panix.com
> > 212-873-1371
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Mon, 16 Jan 1995, Koster wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Meanwhile, the Colorado courts, which adopted this "instant" paragraph number
> > > system months ago, have yet to issue a case with paragraph numbers--because
> > > the macro that adds them ***doesn't work***
> > >
> > > So Jamie Love, who can't even work the shift key on his computer (much less
> > > find the symbol for registered trademarks), is trying to destroy a workable
> > > legal citation system in favor of one based on broken technology.
> > >
> > > Greg Koster
> > > CUNY Law School
> > >
> > > PS to Jamie - The flame war has been quiet for a while. Why are you starting
> > > it again?
> > >
> >
>
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