On 21/12/10 13:57, Max Kellermann wrote: > On 2010/12/20 00:35, Scott Penrose<sco...@dd.com.au> wrote: >> I would like to do a collaborative edited document, preferably online. >> Anyone want to suggest any special technology. Choices are: >> >> * Existing format = tex and use GIT to edit it >> * Wiki pages >> * Google Docs >> * Other ? >> >> I know John will frown at me for saying this, but I think editing it with >> Tex is great for techies, but I would like to see manual contributors who >> are in the user space as well as the dev space, and an online edited system >> will remove all barriers to entry. >> >> Thoughts? > > TeX has some major killer features that other systems don't have, even > 30 years later: > > - you can choose your own frontend to edit it > - can be tracked in git > - text file, no binary bloat (even the simplest word document can have > hundreds of kilobytes), the file contains just what it needs to > - you can easily review changes by diffing them > - you can merge changes from the "stable" branch (6.0) into the > "unstable" branch (6.1) > - can be included in our build/release cycle (it is currently); each > "released" manual will reflect the XCSoar version it is released > with > - individual changes can be cherry-picked by the lector (by using git) > - can be converted to any format (HTML, PDF) > - perfect layout in PDF > - extremely powerful > - huge number of clever modules available, like Tikz for drawing diagrams > - once you've learned it, you can type faster with TeX than with any > other software > - we don't depend on proprietary software or commercial vendors > - 100% stable and reliable (Word is notoriously known for destroying > large documents) > > TeX is the perfect tool for the job, but it has a difficult learning > curve. That's our problem: we want many people to contribute, but > before getting to do actual work, one needs to have some very basic > TeX knowledge. That is discouraging, and is the reason why I have not > received one single contribution yet. That has been said already. > > Other ideas: > > - Scribtex: Scott, what problem does this solve? You still need to > learn TeX. > > - Wiki: no-go, because you can't pack a Wiki into one file (PDF) and > print it. One needs internet access to read a Wiki. Maybe you can > export all pages of a Wiki into a PDF, but that won't be usable - > the structure of a wiki does not work well with linear mediums such > as paper. > > - OpenOffice/MSWord: no-go, because that would mean passing a DOC file > around, and that's going to be versioning hell. > > - Google Docs: seems like a clever solution, but we give up a lot of > control to a commercial company. Google Docs is not very > sophisticated: it doesn't even have text styles, so if we want to > change a certain text, we have to touch each and every line using it > manually. > > My proposal: > > Some sort of compromise. The "real" thing is still a TeX file managed > in git. We export this (via RTF?) into Google Docs. There, any user > may contribute to the wording of the manual. > > One volunteer (who knows git and TeX) is the "lector". The lector > extracts changes from Google Docs to TeX (mostly copy&paste of > highlighted text), creates git commits and submits those to me. > > Max
A few years ago I had a similar problem at work, trying to develop a collaborative editing workflow for engineering lecture notes. I ended up with a solution based on LaTeX + SVN mainly because of the high demands on layout and presentation of maths. The system has proved to be rock solid with now many thousands of pages and over 500MB of material. Any GUI-based solutions were absolutely hopeless. I don't think having more than one editable source file is viable. Ideally, a single source file should be used for online and printed manuals. Letting people edit a Google docs document, then merge the changes manually into a LaTeX file and then export as RTF and import into Google Docs again would be an absolute nightmare. Google docs alone won't work either because the document will look awful after the first few edits, especially if there aren't any styles available (most people don't get the concept of styles anyway, but that's a different matter...). For the purpose of a manual without special demands on the layout and without equations, I would also consider version controlled (X)HTML and different style sheets for screen and printing. The results can look quite ok, and HTML is probably more familiar to most than LaTeX (or Docbook, or *roff, etc). There are some collaborative e-learning authoring solutions out there (e.g. eLML) which are designed to produce web pages and printed manuals from a single source file. I haven't got any experience with any of them, but it might be an option worth exploring. Michael ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Lotusphere 2011 Register now for Lotusphere 2011 and learn how to connect the dots, take your collaborative environment to the next level, and enter the era of Social Business. http://p.sf.net/sfu/lotusphere-d2d _______________________________________________ Xcsoar-user mailing list Xcsoar-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xcsoar-user
