Visiting us from www.pgdp.net ?

Welcome! You will find many familiar things about this site.

But accounts from DP-INT aren't automatically set up here, so you will need to register. Unless (unlikely) someone else already has set up an account here, you should be able to create it with same user name and password as at DP-INT. And, sorry, but your page proofing totals don't follow you, so you will have to proof here starting from zero pages. If you are a PP or PM at DP-INT, e-mail dp-admin@rastko.net to get PP or PM status here (though note that some PP tools cannot process UTF-8). Be sure to set up your preferred language in your preferences: otherwise, you may get a big surprise when you leave the site and try to log back in! (You can always change or correct it in the pulldown box near the top of the personal page). Note: clicking "Log In" on this page does not log you in to proof, but to our wiki.

While DP-INT changed in June 2005 to a four-step proofing and formatting process, DP-EU remains a two-step process. That means it is VERY important that in BOTH the first and second rounds, both proofing — checking for spelling, punctuation, spacing, etc. and formatting — adjusting layout to match the page, correctly handling footnotes, poetry, tables, etc. MUST be corrected. Please refer to the full Guideline document for more details.

Most important, while not all of the references in the guidelines have been changed, UTF-8 encoding has been enabled in DP-EU. If you stay with "simple" texts, this should not be any different than at DP-INT. But with more "complex" texts, older books, or books with a combination of languages, there are some differences. Feel free to stay with basic English texts until DP-INT has switched to its new servers, but if you want to, explore this New World.

There are other minor differences to watch.

North Americans might find a few things on this site a little different, and not just in a few proofing rules. In much of North America, English is the dominant language, with French and Spanish very important in a few places. Here, you will find more than twenty languages used, some of whose alphabet characters will be strange. Many people who are helping to proof English texts are in a similar position as most North Americans who proof in Languages Other than English - they may have studied the language for quite a while, but they aren't as "easy" with it as a "native speaker" is.

The Project Manager may want you to leave certain "special" characters that are not used at DP-INT. This might include some ligatures, such as the "oe" combination, different rules on dashes, or use of "archaic" characters. When there are known obscure characters, the project manager may have placed a list of them on the Project Comments, so that they can be "cut and pasted" into the proofing text. Note that, despite it is present in Unicode, em-dash—is still proofed like--this.

Characters in languages that do not use the Latin alphabet are NOT usually transliterated. So if you proof a project and come across some Greek, Cyrillic, etc., there are different rules than at DP-INT. If you know how to enter the characters on your keyboard, make the corrections. Otherwise, leave the unedited text alone, and either mark the page by an asterisk and note to indicate that you did not edit the "other" language, or add a brief note in the Forum Discussion on the project. In some cases, the Project Comments may give different instructions, so read them carefully!

Use of UTF-8 means that (eventually, once all the software can deal with it, and when entry methods are worked out), all text characters should be able to be accurately produced. Because of that capability, you will find projects here in a variety of languages, and alphabets. Remember that, once you set up your account and personal page, you can filter the list of available projects to avoid having to look through them. On the other hand, if you can proof any available projects, feel free to do so! [If you want to learn more about UTF-8 and Unicode, start by checking the postings on: What Is Unicode and the discussion on UTF-8.

As with DP-INT, make sure you hit the Forums! Anything that's not quite clear will be cheerfully answered in the Forums. And check- your favourite team is probably already running here, and will be glad to touch base with you. Remember- you're not here as a refugee: you've just moved from one room in the community to another.

The forums here are used very frequently for project discussion, and sometimes for a wider range of "immediate" problem resolution than at DP-INT. Please check for comments - with a wide variety of people from different countries and backgrounds, things that are "assumed" at the other site may get more discussion and resolution here during proofing, and following the project discussion for any agreement on updates can significantly help the Post Processor.

You will find that English is the common working language used to communicate in the forums - until people from different parts of Europe find that they have a common tongue, English is usually a common choice for discussion. Be prepared for some differences, and need to clarify, in forum discusssions (for that matter even among major English-speaking countries, remember that Winston Churchill once described the United States and the United Kingdom as "two countries separated by a common language"). And if you want to improve some language skills while you are here, check out the Team Forums, where you will find conversations in many languages.

Come in, sit back and proofread while eating some scones, a baguette, some tapas; a cornetto, koulouria, or zapiekanki, maybe even some moules or a visit to the Sillbricka, if you're adventurous. There's a wide buffet available.

See also: Guide for DP-INT Post Proofers and Guide for DP-INT Project Managers