----- Original Message -----
From: "Jean-Marc Lasgouttes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Stephen Harris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 12:28 PM
Subject: Re: Annotating documents
"Stephen" == Stephen Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >
Stephen> I am quite pleased with the official native Windows port of
Stephen> LyX. When I saw the screenshots of the change tracking
Stephen> support (dvipost) I became worried that Windows might be left
Stephen> behind in 1.4 and the screenshots look pretty good.
We have made a big effort on windows now that we can distribute it
legally (this is why ruurd's port was not distributed by us).
I am a skillful Windows user but certainly short of a developer.
And I didn't realize that my inability to apply that change tracking
patch to Windows was not going to be any problem for you guys
in the 1.4 release. I imagined you would have X11 problems.
Oh, and it is because of the cygwin1.dll license that I looked into a
Msys/Mingw port of Linux flpsed which has a less restrictive license.
Stephen> I meant "collaborative' in the sense of more than one person
Stephen> working together on a paper, for example, and I meant change
Stephen> tracking with the means to make annotative comments. I
Stephen> suppose change tracking has more consequences than this so
Stephen> was not identifiable with what I wrote.
Change tracking indeed goes farther. It would be imaginale to be able
to save a LyX file in some locked-down mode where only inserting
comments is possible.
Stephen> Suppose there is a graduate student writing a thesis and who
Stephen> is submitting his/her paper to 3 advisors for comment.
Stephen> Perhaps the student doesn't want his content directly edited.
With change tracking, he can review the changes and decide whether to
keep them or not.
Stephen> Maybe everyone involved doesn't have LyX or *TeX installed
Stephen> on their machines, it could be just the file originator.
This is the main problem of course. But then we go out of what LyX can
do for you.
I am looking at this from the vantage of the original LyX file creator.
He doesn't need them to use LyX to proofread his document and
return a commented ghostscript file which he can then incorporate
into his LyX document. Perhaps I am mistaken, but the screenshots
of the change tracking software seemed to include a means for proof-
reading. The Notes LyX provides are not directly generated into LyX
are they? Postscript docs are easily generated by LxX. Having a
means of annotating those docs without using LyX makes Lyx a more
versatile and valuable tool, IMO. The comments so generated can just
as easily be incorporated into the next generation of the original LyX doc.
It seems you are looking at this from the vantage of everybody involved
uses LyX, which would not apply to the common student thesis setting.
Stephen> But lots of academic people have ghostscript, and if they
Stephen> don't it is a much smaller install than *Tex.
Like Christian said, acroread is a safer bet.
Well, as I mentioned in my post to Christian, I didn't understand how
he drew his conclusion from what I wrote. I suppose from what you
write that you know something I don't. I didn't think acroread could be
used for commenting without expensive enabling software (Pro).
I didn't think there was any free Windows software for this, which is
why I thought the Windows port of Linux flpsed would be valuable.
Stephen> Maybe what I have in mind is restricted in comparison to
Stephen> corporate document tracking with a lot of authors.
Stephen> Collaborating to me means contributing in an effort but not
Stephen> necessarily with the right to emend the original document,
Stephen> but to add erasable advice within the doc.
Yes, that's not really collaborative (since all the people are not
equal in the effort), but this is needed.
Collaborative does not have this implication, although it may include
this in the specific case of LyX and change tracking. Collaborating
just means working together esp. in a joint intellectual venture. But it
is quite common for scientific papers to be authored by several
contributors without each doing equal work or submitting by the
same editor or having the same sayso as the principal author. This is
still called 'collaborating on a paper'.
But that is just a minor point of English meaning. I didn't realize that
you guys had already resolved what I found to be an issue of making
change tracking graft to my LyX Windows 1.3.6_1. To be truthful
I harbored a suspicion that no developer had done it and so were
not aware that this was a problem. I guess I don't know enough.
Stephen> I built the fl*ed.exe with plain ./configure using
Stephen> Msys/Mingw. Fltk also is cross-platform and built with just
Stephen> ./configure. The package I used which had a Makefile and some
Stephen> odds and ends was 19k. The Makefile is cross-platform, OSX,
Stephen> Linux and Windows XP. The .exe does not have full
Stephen> functionality compared to Linux yet, such as
Stephen> importing/exporting pdf and zoom. It also might die at this
Stephen> stage.
You may want to create a page about that on the wiki.
I think lyx converting a file to postscript which maintains equation
formatting which can be commented on with erasable text by a
reviewer is useful for some LyX authors because it is superior to
the Word html method and less expensive than using the Adobe
comware, although the Adobe conversion is very accurate.
Linux flpsed can open and comment pdf docs too. It this works
in the Windows port I will post a message to the Wiki and find a
link to download flps.exe which is 500k. The Linux/OSX port
away from X11 (package and Makefile) is really small at this point
but doesn't have functionality of the X11 version. For Windows
though, I think it is only minimal free ps annotation app available.
Thanks for your comments, I don't have anything more to add,
now, so will let this thread lapse.
Best regards,
Stephen
