----- Original Message -----
From: "Jean-Marc Lasgouttes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Stephen Harris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 6:56 AM
Subject: Re: Annotating documents
"Stephen" == Stephen Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Stephen> Hello, I have seen posts asking how to convert LyX into MS
Stephen> Word with tex4ht often recommended as a solution. Adobe
Stephen> Acrobat Writer Pro with Acrobat Reader is another
Stephen> collaborative type software, also proprietary.
I am not sure what is collaborative in acrobat. Could you explain? The
text is kind of fixed, and being able to add comments here and there
does not change this. The is a patch for LyX 1.3.6 (and it is much
better in 1.4.x) that adds change tracking support. It seems more
useful to me.
I will add pdfview.cmd to the Wiki (from missing file post).
I am quite pleased with the official native Windows port of LyX.
When I saw the screenshots of the change tracking support (dvipost)
I became worried that Windows might be left behind in 1.4 and the
screenshots look pretty good.
Acrobat Writer Pro allows the author to save a .pdf file so that a
colleague can add comments using only the free Acrobat Reader.
MS Word also has change tracking but but is expensive like Pro.
Perhaps I should only say they can add impermanent text.
I meant "collaborative' in the sense of more than one person working
together on a paper, for example, and I meant change tracking with the means
to make annotative comments. I suppose change tracking has
more consequences than this so was not identifiable with what I wrote.
Stephen> I found a couple of free softwares for Linux, but none for
Stephen> Windows for adding comments to ps and pdf docs. That has
Stephen> changed and flpsed is available for Windows/Cygwin. Since
Stephen>LyX can save as .ps, flspsed seems a higher fidelity approach.
Why couldn't people use the .lyx file directly and add comments to that?
JMarc
Suppose there is a graduate student writing a thesis and who is
submitting his/her paper to 3 advisors for comment. Perhaps the
student doesn't want his content directly edited. Maybe everyone
involved doesn't have LyX or *TeX installed on their machines, it
could be just the file originator. But lots of academic people have
ghostscript, and if they don't it is a much smaller install than *Tex.
The originator of the document will be using LyX and has an
easy option of exporting to postscript which I think retains the
formatting better than going through html and Word. Another
associate contributor to the document only needs ghostscript
(in the Path) and fl_ps_ed.exe which is 500k for Win XP.
Maybe what I have in mind is restricted in comparison to corporate
document tracking with a lot of authors. Collaborating to me means
contributing in an effort but not necessarily with the right to emend
the original document, but to add erasable advice within the doc.
I built the fl*ed.exe with plain ./configure using Msys/Mingw. Fltk
also is cross-platform and built with just ./configure. The package
I used which had a Makefile and some odds and ends was 19k.
The Makefile is cross-platform, OSX, Linux and Windows XP. The
.exe does not have full functionality compared to Linux yet, such
as importing/exporting pdf and zoom. It also might die at this stage.
I'm in favor of cross-platform software, and a fan of Don Knuth
and any expression of digital typography. I do not have your
expertise nor your knowledge of the future of LyX. So maybe
concerning myself with Windows 1.4 Lyx change tracking or a
more limited annotative functionality was just none of my business
and also you may be aware of gaps in my thinking.
Best regards,
Stephen
