Others ⇒ Document Editing by Multiple Users

[crazytom]

Hello LaTeX community,

I am very new to LaTeX, only did a few documents but now I need to set up a workspace for two people working on a project. The project will be about 300 A4 pages. At the moment we are working with TeXstudio 2.2.

Our set up at the moment is that every time someone works on an part of the project, he creates an new *.tex file and writes in there, starting with a "\section{}" and saves with filename_v1.tex in synchronized folder (drop box). The other one checks the document afterwards and saves it as filename_v2.tex, filename_v1.tex goes into an archive folder.

The problem now is that we have many *.tex files and if someone updates a file to a new version, the other one does not see what has been edited (for example if someone knows: MS Word has a function to highlight edits and show what was edited).

So if someone has tips how to set up a good work flow for two people working on a project please let me know. It is getting more and more crowded every day.

Thanks a lot for help!

[meho_r]

1. A version control system like Subversion or Git. This is "the ultimate" solution, but probably not the easiest one to start with.
2. Since you're basically using two files at a time, you can simply use some diff tool to check for changes. I'm quite fond of Meld, but there are many others. This link might be useful.
3. Not-so-cool approach, but still probably useful: save your .tex documents as .doc or .odt as well, make (and track) changes there, and export resulting document back to .tex when finished.

Actually, you should keep in mind that TeX is typesetting system and its natural purpose is to finalize a document, typeset it beautifully, meaning that it is not intended originally for stages prior to typesetting (i.e. editing). I personally do all editing using office apps, like LibreOffice Writer, and, when the document is finished and ready for the final stage, I export it to .txt, import to a LaTeX editor, and do the typesetting.

[crazytom]

Thanks for the help.
I also found subversion as i was googling my problem. But as you said, that is not an easy way to start...but the idea with diff tool sounds good to me

The problem is, we are using tons of mathematical expressions and so I don't think it would be good to start with an office solution!?