Slashdot Mirror
Collaborative Academic Writing Software?
Thomas M Hughes writes "Despite its learning curve, LaTeX is pretty much the standard in academic writing. By abstracting out the substance from the content, it becomes possible to focus heavily on the writing, and then deal with formatting later. However, LaTeX is starting to show its age, specifically when it comes to collaborative work. One solution to this is to simply pair up LaTeX with version control software (such as Subversion) to allow multiple collaborators to work on the same document at one time. But adding Subversion to the mix only seems to increase the learning curve. Is there a way to combine the power of LaTeX with the power of Subversion without scaring off a non-technical writer? The closest I can approximate would be to have something like Lyx (to hide the learning curve of LaTeX) with integrated svn (to hide the learning curve of svn). However, this doesn't seem available. Google Docs is popular right now, but Docs has no support for LaTeX, citation management, or anything remotely resembling decent formatting options. Are there other choices out there?"
I think any technical writer that isn't scared away by the syntax of LaTeX should be able to master "svn update", and "svn commit". And if that's too much, there are plugins for Windows, Mac, and Linux that integrate Subversion with the normal file browser.
Exactly. Our lab submitted a collaborative paper that involved five people editing the document. SVN was more than enough for our needs, and all you need is an Apache install running somewhere. It literally was painless because of SVN, just make sure everyone types in descriptive log messages. Bonus: the commit logs can help you determine the order of authors :)
On the frontend, the best SVN clients I've used are TortoiseSVN for Windows and RapidSVN for Linux. As I said, couldn't be happier with the setup. IMO, any more functionality is absolutely unnecessary.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Funny thing is, if one uses the styles in Word correctly, you get a WYSIWYM editor, just never, EVER touch the bold, italic, underscore button. And the sad thing is it's much, much easier to do this in word 2000 then in newer versions.
;-)
Warning: Microsoft bashing below
Micro$oft is so bad, that when its software works, they break it on the next version!
An ex-paramour of mine was a graduate student in Egyptology. Used to go on archaeological digs all the time. She could speak or read six languages fluently, several of them dead. When we went to see the touring collection of the British Museum she read the hieroglyphs on various artifacts to us as easily as you or I would read a street sign. She's since finished up her PhD. I'm certain she'll end up a department head at a top university someday. Very academic.
She also got lost driving to places she'd already been to several times, and couldn't understand how to calculate a 20% tip by doubling and moving the decimal point. Can't imagine her using LaTeX. or CVS. Not technical at all.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
This is why
These systems were designed with programming in mind, they compare files on a line by line basis.
They would be perfect for the job.
If you change a word SVN would replace the whole line which might be a whole paragraph. So when you do a diff, both the old and new paragraphs are shown and it gets difficult at times to know exactly what changed.
And this is simply bull,
because % this is a comment
TeX makes it an ideal % maybe 'perfect is better'
tool % TODO: choose some other noun
to break a sentence into
segments % with comments!
which can illustrate
its structure. % yes, no apostrophe here!
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.