3 ms·

Did they take into account something like version control? Because, I have a hard time seeing using Word on a collaborative paper - or even just as the single w

by jwl 12y ago

Did they take into account something like version control? Because, I have a hard time seeing using Word on a collaborative paper - or even just as the single writer - being very effective in terms of version control.

phreeza 12y ago
The more senior people in my research group actually prefer Word (and OpenOffice) for the reason that it does have an inline, visual change tracking feature. Not as powerful as git of course, but it does actually get the job done and is a lot easier to use.
Fomite 12y ago
This is something of a double-edged sword. Writing in LaTeX requires all the collaborators to be familiar with it - nearly everyone is familiar enough with Word to make that work, but as multidisciplinary papers become more common, the same is not necessarily true for LaTeX. I encountered this when working with a group of both applied math people and clinicians - the applied math people all wanted to use LaTeX, but the gains just weren't worth the learning curve for the clinical co-authors.
- duaneb 12y ago
  Surely google docs is better for collaboration than word is, though, unless you're doing serious math typesetting.
  - Fomite 12y ago
    Google Docs is decent, though I do usually have a fair amount of math typesetting, but one of the key issues with Google Docs is you have to trust everyone doing the writing to not change the tone of the piece, etc. It's less conducive to the "Single Approving Authority" model that I've found useful in some recent papers I've written.
Thrymr 12y ago
> I have a hard time seeing using Word [...] being very effective in terms of version control. If you're writing a paper with other software developers who already use git, this is very true. If you are collaborating with people who have never used a version control system, it is very much the opposite.

3 ms·

Did they take into account something like version control? Because, I have a hard time seeing using Word on a collaborative paper - or even just as the single w

by jwl 12y ago

phreeza 12y ago
The more senior people in my research group actually prefer Word (and OpenOffice) for the reason that it does have an inline, visual change tracking feature. Not as powerful as git of course, but it does actually get the job done and is a lot easier to use.
Fomite 12y ago
This is something of a double-edged sword. Writing in LaTeX requires all the collaborators to be familiar with it - nearly everyone is familiar enough with Word to make that work, but as multidisciplinary papers become more common, the same is not necessarily true for LaTeX. I encountered this when working with a group of both applied math people and clinicians - the applied math people all wanted to use LaTeX, but the gains just weren't worth the learning curve for the clinical co-authors.
- duaneb 12y ago
  Surely google docs is better for collaboration than word is, though, unless you're doing serious math typesetting.
  - Fomite 12y ago
    Google Docs is decent, though I do usually have a fair amount of math typesetting, but one of the key issues with Google Docs is you have to trust everyone doing the writing to not change the tone of the piece, etc. It's less conducive to the "Single Approving Authority" model that I've found useful in some recent papers I've written.
Thrymr 12y ago
> I have a hard time seeing using Word [...] being very effective in terms of version control. If you're writing a paper with other software developers who already use git, this is very true. If you are collaborating with people who have never used a version control system, it is very much the opposite.