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Fidus Writer: Open Source Collaborative Editor For Non-Geek Academics

Posted by timothy on from the grad-school-procrastination-is-the-most-satisfying-kind dept.

johanneswilm writes "While writing my Ph.D in anthropology I found out it's almost impossible to get non-geeks to help me with editing my thesis because it was written in Latex. Lyx is almost there, but as it's not web based, it's difficult to use for online collaboration. Writelatex.com is online, but typing LaTeX code is a no-go for non-geeks. Google Docs is web based and near-WYSIWYG, but lacks support for professional print formats such as Latex. The Ph.D took longer than expected, so before finishing me and three others were able to code an entirely new editor: Fidus Writer: web based, open source (AGPL), almost-WYSIWYG and with tools for academics such as citation management and formula support and output formats PDF, Epub, Latex, HTML."

2 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Editor by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 5, Funny

    Do your job or give up on it, jesus christ.

    Are you calling for the apocalypse, or is there something I don't know about the Slashdot "editorial" staff?

  2. Re:Write in a Word Processor, Format in Latex by johanneswilm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    because this is not "a short time". I have had the job of converting Word to Latex for an anthropology journal in Norway before. it took months and months as te original authors found errors and would send me emails wit instructions such as "on page 218, in the third paragraph, please add a comma after the word 'fish'." I would get tons and tons of these emails every day. a cmplete nightmare.