3 ms·

Yeah, GitHub for papers is really hampered in fields that don't regularly use TeX.

by Fomite 13y ago

TeMPOraL 13y ago
In work I accidentally discovered once that Microsoft Word (and Excel) supports three-way-merges natively, so there's at least that for non-TeX folks.
Myrmornis 13y ago
Now that MS Word uses zipped xml as their format you can make some progress by specifying a custom diff driver which pipes the plain text to stdout. https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gitattributes.html https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gitattribut...
eru 13y ago
Just go with markdown?
- Fomite 13y ago
  As much as I'd like to, I doubt my collaborators would go for it - I work with a lot of clinicians using ancient computers with a stable, predictable work pattern, and they are understandably content with that.
hugofirth 13y ago
People who don't use TeX for accessibility reasons might want to give it another look. The tooling has risen in quality and accessibility hugely of late. I use TexPad[1] - which I like enormously. Otherwise, as another commenter mentioned, there is always Markdown. Combined with MathJax[2] and custom style sheets you see many of the same benefits with greatly increased simplicity. A great desktop Markdown editor (if people don't like web based ones) is Mou[3]. Lastly - the advantage to using Markdown is that if you have to work with someone who does use TeX - something like pandoc[4] can be used to convert between formats fairly nicely. One thing I think is missing is a "Make" like program to dictate how to combine multiple Markdown or TeX documents into a single document, which folders to scan for references etc. I've seen a couple of home grown solutions - but nothing that really fit the bill. [1]: https://www.texpadapp.com/ https://www.texpadapp.com/ [2]: http://www.mathjax.org/ http://www.mathjax.org/ [3]: http://mouapp.com/ http://mouapp.com/ [4]: http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/

Yeah, GitHub for papers is really hampered in fields that don't regularly use TeX.

by Fomite 13y ago

Yeah, GitHub for papers is really hampered in fields that don't regularly use TeX.

In work I accidentally discovered once that Microsoft Word (and Excel) supports three-way-merges natively, so there's at least that for non-TeX folks.

Myrmornis 13y ago

Now that MS Word uses zipped xml as their format you can make some progress by specifying a custom diff driver which pipes the plain text to stdout. https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gitattributes.html https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gitattribut...

eru 13y ago

Just go with markdown?

Fomite 13y ago
As much as I'd like to, I doubt my collaborators would go for it - I work with a lot of clinicians using ancient computers with a stable, predictable work pattern, and they are understandably content with that.

hugofirth 13y ago

People who don't use TeX for accessibility reasons might want to give it another look. The tooling has risen in quality and accessibility hugely of late. I use TexPad[1] - which I like enormously. Otherwise, as another commenter mentioned, there is always Markdown. Combined with MathJax[2] and custom style sheets you see many of the same benefits with greatly increased simplicity. A great desktop Markdown editor (if people don't like web based ones) is Mou[3]. Lastly - the advantage to using Markdown is that if you have to work with someone who does use TeX - something like pandoc[4] can be used to convert between formats fairly nicely. One thing I think is missing is a "Make" like program to dictate how to combine multiple Markdown or TeX documents into a single document, which folders to scan for references etc. I've seen a couple of home grown solutions - but nothing that really fit the bill. [1]: https://www.texpadapp.com/ https://www.texpadapp.com/ [2]: http://www.mathjax.org/ http://www.mathjax.org/ [3]: http://mouapp.com/ http://mouapp.com/ [4]: http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/