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Thanks for the feedback. I agree there's a lot that remains to be done on formatting, etc. This is, after all, just an MVP. One of the directions I may take th

Thanks for the feedback. I agree there's a lot that remains to be done on formatting, etc. This is, after all, just an MVP. One of the directions I may take this is to allow those things you mention like clause numbers and definitions to be specified, perhaps by some markdown flavor. As you can see, we already enforce one formatting convention: the signature block. As this is developed, we may enforce other conventions. The Manual of Style of Contract Drafting (4th Ed.) [0] would generally serve as inspiration for me to the extent we enforce any formatting conventions. [0] https://www.adamsdrafting.com/writing/mscd/ https://www.adamsdrafting.com/writing/mscd/

dylan604 5y ago
what a fine line that would be to walk. to add all of these formatting abilities, you move further and further away from plain text. at some point, you've recreated the same issues as Word.
- hkhanna 5y ago
  100%. I think about this balance constantly.
- danuker 5y ago
  Indeed. I argue LaTeX is unreadable for a non-techie. Maybe Markdown or reStructuredText would provide a starting point. But it would have to have a WYSIWYG editor.
nvrspyx 5y ago
You can look into YAML frontmatter for the things like clause numbers and definitions if you go the markdown path.
phphphphp 5y ago
I'd suggest you prioritise defining a format earlier rather than later. The format / standard can evolve over time to accommodate the evolution of your product (that backwards-compatible evolution can be defined as part of the first version) but to go from no standard to any standard is much more difficult once people are already using the platform: you'll either break established workflows, or burden yourself with a lifetime of supporting unbounded backwards compatibility (because every client will, by virtue of writing integration code, unintentionally define their own standard).

dylan604 5y ago

what a fine line that would be to walk. to add all of these formatting abilities, you move further and further away from plain text. at some point, you've recreated the same issues as Word.

hkhanna 5y ago
100%. I think about this balance constantly.
danuker 5y ago
Indeed. I argue LaTeX is unreadable for a non-techie. Maybe Markdown or reStructuredText would provide a starting point. But it would have to have a WYSIWYG editor.

nvrspyx 5y ago

You can look into YAML frontmatter for the things like clause numbers and definitions if you go the markdown path.

phphphphp 5y ago

I'd suggest you prioritise defining a format earlier rather than later. The format / standard can evolve over time to accommodate the evolution of your product (that backwards-compatible evolution can be defined as part of the first version) but to go from no standard to any standard is much more difficult once people are already using the platform: you'll either break established workflows, or burden yourself with a lifetime of supporting unbounded backwards compatibility (because every client will, by virtue of writing integration code, unintentionally define their own standard).