[texhax] collaborative writing with (La)TeX

[Torsten Wagner]

Hi David,
On 04/21/2010 03:55 AM, David Romano wrote:
> I was just wondering whether anyone might know of a way for multiple
> authors to work together on a source file in a way that is similar in
> spirit to googledocs, where the source is kept in a central,
> web-accessible location. The drawback with googledocs is that users have
> to download the source to view the typeset output, so it would be nice
> if the typesetting could be done and its output viewed at the same
> central location.

Just for clarification you are looking for a way to work and display 
your manuscripts online (in a web-browser applet) maybe even with 
multiple authors? If so, only a server-based solution might be 
available. In that case I would check the capabilities of open source 
document managment systems.

If you "only" like to have a way multiple authors can access a document 
work on it an resubmit changes to it use, as mentioned already, 
subversion or git or mercury or cvs, etc.

Since those tools came for collaborative coding of exteremly large 
projects (like the linux kernel), they are very powerful in merging text 
(code) together, track changes, grant access, accept and reject changes, 
etc.

However, this makes only sense IMHO for larger documents like a book or 
longer article. Otherwise you would constantly have the problem that two 
different authors make different changes on the same text. In that case 
all the above tools need human assistance to sort out which of the 
changes should be applied and which should be rejected. However, the 
tools help you greatly in doing so quickly and efficient.

Hope that helps

Torsten