Re: Tool for document management

[Richard Lyons]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2007 at 01:31:57AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:

> On Wed, 26 Sep 2007 21:31:32 -0400, Douglas A Tutty
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:  
> 
> > Here's my personal letter template.  I copy it to the correct file
> > name, edit it, then latex it.  The letter text itself is just plain
> > text.
> 
> 
> > \documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{article}
> > %preamble here
> > \begin{document}
> > % no page number on this first page
> > \thispagestyle{empty} \begin{flushleft} Douglas A. Tutty\\ xxx
> > x, RR. x\\ xx, ON xxx xxx\\ Ph: (xxx) xxx--\\ Email:
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] \end{flushleft}
> 
> > \noindent \today
> 
> > \bigskip
[...]
> 
> --8<---cut hereletter_template->8---
> 
> \documentclass[12pt]{letter}
> \usepackage[dvips]{graphicx}
> \usepackage{times}
> \pagestyle{empty}
> \usepackage[margin=1in, head=0.25in, headsep=0.25in, nofoot]{geometry}
> \setlength{\topmargin}{0pt}
> \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{0pt}
> \setlength{\headheight}{0pt}
> \setlength{\headsep}{0pt}
> \setlength{\footskip}{5pt}
> \setlength{\textheight}{9.0in}
> \setlength{\textwidth}{6.5in}
> 
> \address{Manoj Srivastava\\
> 229 Brandon Lane\\
> Woodbury, TN 37190}
[...]

Thanks, guys.  I have been doing the same sort of thing -- in more
complex templates -- for some years.  I've always felt it was a bit
clumsy to finish up with all these files cluttering up my nice clean
directories.  So now you have spurred me into writing a script to take
a given letter -- just the bit from the address to the end of the
content -- and add the template letterhead, the date, and the closing,
put the heading in bold, then latex, dvips, save a tagline on the
original body file to say which template was used, what date, and what
style of closing, clean up the intermediate files and make tea.

Well, I nearly did it too, but I couldn't persuade bash to stop
stripping out backslashes, so I've started again in perl. Nearly there
now.  So thanks for the stimulation.  I've been putting this off for
years.  Now I'll be able to write letters mostly in plain text. :-)

But it doesn't yet make tea...
-- 
richard


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Re: Tool for document management

[John W. Foster]

On Tuesday 25 September 2007 10:16, Steve Lamb wrote:
>
> I do not see this as the case.  I took your suggested to google on
> those terms and what I found in the first 3 pages of hits were many, many
> "Open Source" solutions which were Windows only, pared down versions of
> enterprise solutions.  Many of those did not fit my requirements.  Most
> were written in JAVA which is something I'm not going to consider.  Oddly
> enough on the second page was a hit for Subversion so we must not be too
> far off the mark.  ;)
---
Hi Steve. I have been watching this thread for a while and it occurred to me 
that I might have a suggestion that has not been mentioned. I have recently 
been learning to manage a very involved site that uses Mediawiki as the main 
software. It actually is very simple to use and it does provide virtually 
every component that you have listed as needed, so far. Not something I 
ordinarily would recommend, but you have been at this plenty long enough to 
figure out how to adapt it to your needs. I would only be concerned as to the 
real power that you require, might be like nuking flies instead of swatting 
them. However if you feel that you will involve a number of people working 
from several locations, then check it out. let me know if you have specific 
questions.
Best wishes!
-- 
John W. Foster


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Re: Tool for document management

[Douglas A. Tutty]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2007 at 11:51:04AM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
> On Sep 26, 2007, at 11:31 PM, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >On Wed, 26 Sep 2007 21:31:32 -0400, Douglas A Tutty
> ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> >
> >>Here's my personal letter template. ...
> 
> Thanks, those give me a nice starting point.
> 
> LaTeX is really a godsend for geeks like me with poor artistic  
> skills.  It gives me a set of nice, safe, acceptable-looking layouts  
> so I don't have to worry about fonts and margins.  I no longer long  
> for the days when it was acceptable to buzz something out in 12-point  
> Elite on a 9-pin dot matrix printer and tear off the tractor feed  
> strips. ;)

Guess what.  My only printer is an IBM Personal Computer Graphics
Printer (like the one pictured in the original marketing material for
the origional PC).  Its a 9-pin dot-matrix, tractor fed.  I run latex
and then either get nicely formatted plain-text, or via apsfilter and
gs-gpl, I get nice fonts and everything.

I still have to tear off the feed strip, it takes 17 minutes per page,
and the ribbon-feed is broken so I have to sit and twiddle the ribbon
knob...

:)

Doug.


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Re: Tool for document management

[Florian Kulzer]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 10:39:55 -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
>
> On Sep 25, 2007, at 7:17 PM, John Hasler wrote:
>
>> David Brodbeck writes:
>>> TeX is awesome for writing books and scientific papers.  If you're
>>> writing a letter to Grandma, though, OpenOffice is better suited.
>>
>> Now _that_ sounds like driving a semi truck to the supermarket to pick up 
>> a
>> bottle of milk.
>
> Depends on your perspective, I guess.  It just feels like by the time I get 
> all the preliminary verbiage TeX needs typed out, I could have written the 
> whole letter in OO.  Also, looking at my copy of 'The Not So Short 
> Introduction To LaTeX,' it's not clear to me what document class I'd use.  
> They're all going to be a bit clumsy and inappropriate.  It's not an 
> "article", it's not a "report", and it's certainly not a "book"...

I like the "scrlttr2" class provided by koma-script (which is included
in the texlive-latex-recommended package). It takes care of all the
formatting, including details such as the exact position of the address
and the matching foldmarks for envelopes with an address window. The
letterhead can be stored in a separate file, which makes the source of
the individual letters more easily readable and provides a convenient
mechanism to switch between different letterheads, e.g. for business,
private, other languages...

If anyone is interested, here is an example (PDF, 31 KB):

http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer/latex-letter/letter.pdf

(I replaced the logo of my institute with a simple dummy to make the
 file smaller; most of the remaining size is taken up by the embedded
 latex fonts.)

The source files are here (tarball, 5.6 KB):

http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer/latex-letter/latex-letter.tar.bz2

-- 
Regards,| http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer
  Florian   |


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Re: Tool for document management

[Neil Watson]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2007 at 11:51:04AM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
LaTeX is really a godsend for geeks like me with poor artistic  
skills.  It gives me a set of nice, safe, acceptable-looking layouts  
so I don't have to worry about fonts and margins.  I no longer long  
for the days when it was acceptable to buzz something out in 12-point  
Elite on a 9-pin dot matrix printer and tear off the tractor feed  
strips. ;)


When I was reviewing my first large LaTeX doc my coworker thought I was
reading a vendor supplied white paper.  He was so impressed with the
quality of the type-setting he asked me to tech him  how to use it.

--
Neil Watson | Debian Linux
System Administrator| Uptime 13 days
http://watson-wilson.ca


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Re: Tool for document management

[David Brodbeck]

On Sep 26, 2007, at 11:31 PM, Manoj Srivastava wrote:


On Wed, 26 Sep 2007 21:31:32 -0400, Douglas A Tutty
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:


Here's my personal letter template. ...
--8<---cut hereletter_template- 
>8---


Thanks, those give me a nice starting point.

LaTeX is really a godsend for geeks like me with poor artistic  
skills.  It gives me a set of nice, safe, acceptable-looking layouts  
so I don't have to worry about fonts and margins.  I no longer long  
for the days when it was acceptable to buzz something out in 12-point  
Elite on a 9-pin dot matrix printer and tear off the tractor feed  
strips. ;)



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Re: Tool for document management

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Wed, 26 Sep 2007 21:31:32 -0400, Douglas A Tutty
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:  

> Here's my personal letter template.  I copy it to the correct file
> name, edit it, then latex it.  The letter text itself is just plain
> text.


> \documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{article}
> %preamble here
> \begin{document}
> % no page number on this first page
> \thispagestyle{empty} \begin{flushleft} Douglas A. Tutty\\ xxx
> x, RR. x\\ xx, ON xxx xxx\\ Ph: (xxx) xxx--\\ Email:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] \end{flushleft}

> \noindent \today

> \bigskip

> \noindent Dear:

> \bigskip

> \begin{flushleft} Yours truly,

> \vspace{2cm}

> Douglas A. Tutty.  \end{flushleft}

> \end{document}

--8<---cut hereletter_template->8---

\documentclass[12pt]{letter}
\usepackage[dvips]{graphicx}
\usepackage{times}
\pagestyle{empty}
\usepackage[margin=1in, head=0.25in, headsep=0.25in, nofoot]{geometry}
\setlength{\topmargin}{0pt}
\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{0pt}
\setlength{\headheight}{0pt}
\setlength{\headsep}{0pt}
\setlength{\footskip}{5pt}
\setlength{\textheight}{9.0in}
\setlength{\textwidth}{6.5in}

\address{Manoj Srivastava\\
229 Brandon Lane\\
Woodbury, TN 37190}

\signature{Manoj Srivastava}


\makelabels{}

\begin{document}

\letter{Some one\\
P.O. Box 2210\\
Sometown USA, 0-}

\opening{Dear Sir}

Blah Blah blah.

\closing{Yours Sincerely,}
\ps{post scriptum}
\encl{some thing or the other}

\end{document}

--8<---cut here---end--->8---

--8<---cut here-envelopestart->8---

% TeX Template for an envelope
% 
% To use:
%
% Copy into a new file, replace all
% [BRACKETED UPPER-CASE TEXT]
% with your own, then run the tex command on it.
% Use dvips to print the .dvi output in landscape mode:
% dvips -t landscape envelope.dvi 

\font\cmssa = cmss12
\font\cmssc = cmss14
%\special{papersize=9.5in,3.25in}
%\special{landscape}
\parindent 0 pt\nopagenumbers\parskip 10 pt
\hsize 9.5 in\vsize 3.25 in
\voffset 1.25 in
\cmssa

Manoj Srivastava

229 Brandon Lane

Woodbury, TM 37190

\vskip .5 in\vskip 15 pt\parindent 3.5 in 
\font\addressrm=cmss16 scaled\magstep2
\addressrm

document

P.O. Box 2210

Sometown USA, 0-

\end

--8<---cut here---end--->8---

manoj
-- 
APL is a natural extension of assembler language programming; ...and is
best for educational purposes.  -- A. Perlis
Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C


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Re: Tool for document management

[Douglas A. Tutty]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 10:39:55AM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
> On Sep 25, 2007, at 7:17 PM, John Hasler wrote:
> 
> >David Brodbeck writes:
> >>TeX is awesome for writing books and scientific papers.  If you're
> >>writing a letter to Grandma, though, OpenOffice is better suited.
> >
> >Now _that_ sounds like driving a semi truck to the supermarket to  
> >pick up a
> >bottle of milk.
> 
> Depends on your perspective, I guess.  It just feels like by the time  
> I get all the preliminary verbiage TeX needs typed out, I could have  
> written the whole letter in OO.  Also, looking at my copy of 'The Not  
> So Short Introduction To LaTeX,' it's not clear to me what document  
> class I'd use.  They're all going to be a bit clumsy and  
> inappropriate.  It's not an "article", it's not a "report", and it's  
> certainly not a "book"...
> 

Here's my personal letter template.  I copy it to the correct file name,
edit it, then latex it.  The letter text itself is just plain text.

Doug.

---


\documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{article}
%preamble here
\begin{document}
% no page number on this first page
\thispagestyle{empty}
\begin{flushleft}
Douglas A. Tutty\\
xxx x, RR. x\\
xx, ON xxx xxx\\
Ph: (xxx) xxx--\\
Email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
\end{flushleft}

\noindent \today

\bigskip

\noindent Dear: 

\bigskip


\begin{flushleft}
Yours truly,

\vspace{2cm}

Douglas A. Tutty.
\end{flushleft}

\end{document}


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Re: Tool for document management

[Ron Johnson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 09/25/07 18:05, David Brodbeck wrote:
> 
> On Sep 24, 2007, at 9:39 PM, Russell L. Harris wrote:
>> I use XEMacs daily to produce LaTeX documents.  I have frequent need
>> to search my archives of material I have written in the past, and I
>> use grep for this purpose.  It is difficult for me to imagine an
>> advantage offered by OpenOffice which would compensate for the
>> inability to make use of grep in searching my archives.
> 
> I think it depends on what you're doing.  TeX is awesome for writing
> books and scientific papers.  If you're writing a letter to Grandma,
> though, OpenOffice is better suited.  Using TeX for that is a bit like
> driving a semi truck to the supermarket to pick up a bottle of milk.

Load that beast to write a simple letter?  Or do some simple
spreadsheet work?

AbiWord and Gnumeric are *much* better at that task.

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

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Re: Tool for document management

[Russell L. Harris]

* Rob Mahurin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [070926 16:42]:
> On Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 10:39:55AM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
> > Looking at my copy of 'The Not So Short Introduction To LaTeX,' it's
> > not clear to me what document class I'd use [for a letter].
> 
> For some reason that book omits the LaTeX "letter" class.


The LaTeX letter class is rather pathetic.  The letters it produces
have wide margins and are suitable only for personal correspondence;
they remind me of the style which was taught in American elementary
schools back in the 1950's.

Kopka and Daly, in "A Guide to LaTeX", third edition, provide a
fully-detailed example of a letterhead class which is suitable for the
correspondence of a business or an organization.

Using as a guide the letterhead class of Kopka and Daly, I created my
own letterhead class which has a header, a footer, two columns, page
numbers, etc.  The header for the second and subsequent pages displays
the name of the recipient and the date of the communication.  The
footer of every page displays my own organization name and address.
The result is a layout which is attractive, professional in
appearance, and stands out from the crowd.

RLH


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Re: Tool for document management

[Rob Mahurin]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 10:39:55AM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
> Looking at my copy of 'The Not So Short Introduction To LaTeX,' it's
> not clear to me what document class I'd use [for a letter].

For some reason that book omits the LaTeX "letter" class.

-- 
Rob Mahurin
Dept. of Physics & Astronomy
University of Tennessee phone:  865 207 2594
Knoxville, TN  37996email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: Tool for document management

[Johannes Wiedersich]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

David Brodbeck wrote:
> 
> On Sep 25, 2007, at 7:17 PM, John Hasler wrote:
> 
>> David Brodbeck writes:
>>> TeX is awesome for writing books and scientific papers.  If you're
>>> writing a letter to Grandma, though, OpenOffice is better suited.
>>
>> Now _that_ sounds like driving a semi truck to the supermarket to pick
>> up a
>> bottle of milk.
> 
> Depends on your perspective, I guess.  It just feels like by the time I
> get all the preliminary verbiage TeX needs typed out, I could have
> written the whole letter in OO.  Also, looking at my copy of 'The Not So
> Short Introduction To LaTeX,' it's not clear to me what document class
> I'd use.  They're all going to be a bit clumsy and inappropriate.  It's
> not an "article", it's not a "report", and it's certainly not a "book"...

Just put the 'reliminary veriage' into a style file of your own, jw.sty,
and your letter becomes:

==
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{jw}
\begin{document}
Text to go here...
\end{document}
==

... not much longer than opening a template in OOo.


Johannes
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Re: Tool for document management

[Sarunas Burdulis]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

David Brodbeck wrote:
> 
> On Sep 25, 2007, at 7:17 PM, John Hasler wrote:
> 
>> David Brodbeck writes:
>>> TeX is awesome for writing books and scientific papers.  If you're
>>> writing a letter to Grandma, though, OpenOffice is better suited.
>>
>> Now _that_ sounds like driving a semi truck to the supermarket to pick
>> up a
>> bottle of milk.
> 
> Depends on your perspective, I guess.  It just feels like by the time I
> get all the preliminary verbiage TeX needs typed out, I could have
> written the whole letter in OO.  Also, looking at my copy of 'The Not So
> Short Introduction To LaTeX,' it's not clear to me what document class
> I'd use.  They're all going to be a bit clumsy and inappropriate.  It's
> not an "article", it's not a "report", and it's certainly not a "book"...
> 
And given what's going on in TeX (let alone LaTeX) behind the scenes, OO, when 
used to typeset a single letter, might prove to be a somewhat
smaller truck :)

Sarunas
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Re: Tool for document management

[Neil Watson]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 10:39:55AM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
Depends on your perspective, I guess.  It just feels like by the time  
I get all the preliminary verbiage TeX needs typed out, I could have  
written the whole letter in OO


Once of the good things about TeX is that you only need to create that
preamble once for any single type of document.  I have a report
template.  When I want to write a new report I copy the template to the
name of the new report file, open it and start editing.  


As for classes, article and report are pretty similar.  I see no reason
not choose one arbitrarily and then change later if necessary.

--
Neil Watson | Debian Linux
System Administrator| Uptime 11 days
http://watson-wilson.ca


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Re: Tool for document management

[David Brodbeck]

On Sep 25, 2007, at 7:17 PM, John Hasler wrote:


David Brodbeck writes:

TeX is awesome for writing books and scientific papers.  If you're
writing a letter to Grandma, though, OpenOffice is better suited.


Now _that_ sounds like driving a semi truck to the supermarket to  
pick up a

bottle of milk.


Depends on your perspective, I guess.  It just feels like by the time  
I get all the preliminary verbiage TeX needs typed out, I could have  
written the whole letter in OO.  Also, looking at my copy of 'The Not  
So Short Introduction To LaTeX,' it's not clear to me what document  
class I'd use.  They're all going to be a bit clumsy and  
inappropriate.  It's not an "article", it's not a "report", and it's  
certainly not a "book"...





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Re: Tool for document management

[Dan H]

On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 09:45:11 -0700
Steve Lamb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I know what you meant.  But you are flatly ignoring my
> requirement for syncing.  I make an edit on Machine A and
> toss-a-tarball onto whatever machine(s) I decide.  Then I make an
> edit on Machine B and do the same.  Then I remembered I had edits
> from machine A, pull them down and, whoops, overwritten.
> Toss-a-tarball works fine if you're working on a single machine and
> want to just do a simplistic backup.  It falls apart when you add
> more machines, maybe people, into the mix.  That's why version
> controls showed up in the first place.

The idea is good, but vcs (I'm only familiar with svn) won't work with binary 
files IF several people on several machines might edit one and the same file. 
Keeping everything in sync across several collaborators who might touch the 
same files relies heavily on diff/patch mechanisms that only work with text 
files.

Doesn't Oo have some built-in versioning or collaboration system? Something a 
bit more sophisticated than the "Record Changes" feature?

--D.


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Re: Tool for document management

[Charlie]

On Wed, 26 Sep 2007, Manoj Srivastava shared this with us all:
>--} On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:05:53 -0700, David Brodbeck
>--} <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
>--}
>--} > On Sep 24, 2007, at 9:39 PM, Russell L. Harris wrote:
>--} >> I use XEMacs daily to produce LaTeX documents.  I have frequent need
>--} >> to search my archives of material I have written in the past, and I
>--} >> use grep for this purpose.  It is difficult for me to imagine an
>--} >> advantage offered by OpenOffice which would compensate for the
>--} >> inability to make use of grep in searching my archives.
>--}
>--} > I think it depends on what you're doing.  TeX is awesome for writing
>--} > books and scientific papers.  If you're writing a letter to Grandma,
>--} > though, OpenOffice is better suited.  Using TeX for that is a bit like
>--} > driving a semi truck to the supermarket to pick up a bottle of milk.
>--}
>--} I dunno.  I have a template for letters all created, with my
>--}  address, salutations, etc. It prints out an envelope for me as well,
>--}  All I have to do is type in the content, and the destination.
>--}
>--} Far, far faster than using openoffice, if you ask me.
>--}
>--} manoj

I also find using lyx is great for that. Using templates very fast, very clean 
and all the virtues of great printing and exporting into all kind of file 
formats for emailing.

Charlie
-- 
Registered Linux User:- 329524
+++
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required 
to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. 
.Henry David Thoreau
<<<>
Debian - Just the best way to do magic.


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Re: Tool for document management

[John Hasler]

David Brodbeck writes:
> TeX is awesome for writing books and scientific papers.  If you're
> writing a letter to Grandma, though, OpenOffice is better suited.

Now _that_ sounds like driving a semi truck to the supermarket to pick up a
bottle of milk.
-- 
John Hasler


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Re: Tool for document management

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:05:53 -0700, David Brodbeck
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:  

> On Sep 24, 2007, at 9:39 PM, Russell L. Harris wrote:
>> I use XEMacs daily to produce LaTeX documents.  I have frequent need
>> to search my archives of material I have written in the past, and I
>> use grep for this purpose.  It is difficult for me to imagine an
>> advantage offered by OpenOffice which would compensate for the
>> inability to make use of grep in searching my archives.

> I think it depends on what you're doing.  TeX is awesome for writing
> books and scientific papers.  If you're writing a letter to Grandma,
> though, OpenOffice is better suited.  Using TeX for that is a bit like
> driving a semi truck to the supermarket to pick up a bottle of milk.

I dunno.  I have a template for letters all created, with my
 address, salutations, etc. It prints out an envelope for me as well,
 All I have to do is type in the content, and the destination.

Far, far faster than using openoffice, if you ask me.

manoj
-- 
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Parnas
Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
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Re: Tool for document management

[David Brodbeck]

On Sep 24, 2007, at 9:39 PM, Russell L. Harris wrote:

I use XEMacs daily to produce LaTeX documents.  I have frequent need
to search my archives of material I have written in the past, and I
use grep for this purpose.  It is difficult for me to imagine an
advantage offered by OpenOffice which would compensate for the
inability to make use of grep in searching my archives.


I think it depends on what you're doing.  TeX is awesome for writing  
books and scientific papers.  If you're writing a letter to Grandma,  
though, OpenOffice is better suited.  Using TeX for that is a bit  
like driving a semi truck to the supermarket to pick up a bottle of  
milk.





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Re: Tool for document management

[Hans Vogelsberger]

Andrei Popescu schrieb:

On Mon, Sep 24, 2007 at 09:57:35PM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:
 

Not having to learn LaTeX would be the head of my list.  While I am sure
it is a fine and dandy language for what it does and I know there are people
who have produced some nice text using it I do not wish to learn a third
computer language just to write fiction in my native language.  What
OpenOffice offers is convenience of visually representing what I want with a
low barrier to entry.
 
Did you try lyx? Just going through the tutorial should give you an 
idea.


Some years ago I changed from LyX to OpenOffice. These days I tried to 
change back. One of the reasons was that there is no grep possible in 
OO. Alas, Texlive and therefore LyX, too, seem not to allow UTF-8, which 
by now has become an absolute necessity for me.


Yours
Hans


Regards,
Andrei



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Re: Tool for document management

[Steve Lamb]

Miles Fidelman wrote:
> It was sort of disappointing to see a discussion that has focused
> primarily on version control tools, and a little on TeX vs. Word vs.
> Open Office issues.

This is D-U where the relative geek level is high.  We're going to tend
towards the technical solutions over the business.

> There are a huge number of document and content management systems
> around - aimed at managing text documents, rather than code, and many of
> them open source (try googling "document management" along with "open
> source").

I do not see this as the case.  I took your suggested to google on those
terms and what I found in the first 3 pages of hits were many, many "Open
Source" solutions which were Windows only, pared down versions of enterprise
solutions.  Many of those did not fit my requirements.  Most were written in
JAVA which is something I'm not going to consider.  Oddly enough on the second
page was a hit for Subversion so we must not be too far off the mark.  ;)


-- 
 Steve C. Lamb | But who decides what they dream?
   PGP Key: 8B6E99C5   |   And dream I do...
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Re: Tool for document management

[Miles Fidelman]

Folks,

I share some of the original writers interest in finding a good document 
management tool.


It was sort of disappointing to see a discussion that has focused 
primarily on version control tools, and a little on TeX vs. Word vs. 
Open Office issues.


There are a huge number of document and content management systems 
around - aimed at managing text documents, rather than code, and many of 
them open source (try googling "document management" along with "open 
source").  I was hoping to see somebody with some experience with one or 
more of them comment.  Apparently there's no such experience on debian-user.


So... just as a suggestion to the original writer: cast a wider net.  
And... if you happen to come across a good email list focused on 
document/content management - let me know!


Miles Fidelman


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Re: Tool for document management

[Steve Lamb]

Ron Johnson wrote:
> Do you happen to have a bug number?

I do not.  I found several references on the OOo forums when searching for
methods of setting my documents to uncompressed for use with Subversion.

On the bright side Mercurial does have a FAQ about using Mercurial with
OOo documents.  I haven't dug into it yet.  I just got Mercurial up and
running in an ad hoc fashion last night.

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   PGP Key: 8B6E99C5   |   And dream I do...
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Re: Tool for document management

[Steve Lamb]

Jochen Schulz wrote:
> What does Subversion have to do with Perl?

Huh...  For some reason I was under the impression it was written in Perl.
 It is not, it is written in C.  So, uhm...  that changes it to "Eww, C!"
 :)  Mea culpa.

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Re: Tool for document management

[Kumar Appaiah]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2007 at 09:00:28AM -0400, Neil Watson wrote:
> With TeX and LaTeX and its ilk the templates actually work.  I can use
> the same template for all of my reports and they always look the same.
> There are no annoying format inconsistencies that are so common with
> Word and OpenOffice.

A +1, and I'd also vouch for consistency, like Neil. Also, CTAN has
numerous classes and formats which can be readily used, like for
Resume writing, exam paper setting etc. Of course, a praise for TeX's
math is always a must.

Anyway, I think this is a little OT with respect to the thread. :-)

Kumar
-- 
Kumar Appaiah,
458, Jamuna Hostel,
Indian Institute of Technology Madras,
Chennai - 600 036


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Re: Tool for document management

[Ron Johnson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 09/24/07 21:10, Steve Lamb wrote:
[snip]
> 
> One I think that will go unfulfilled.  First off Word suffers from the
> same problem.  I found out the hard way on one of my scripting projects.  So
> there's precedent.  The second reason is that OOo developers have stated, many
> times, that the format's not designed to be manipulated by anything other than
> OOo so no consideration is given to either human readability or to the
> usefulness of other tools.  That, too, I found in reading up on putting ODTs
> in some sort of repository.

That's a very closed-source attitude.  :(  Coming from BigCo
employees, though, I'm not terribly surprised.

Do you happen to have a bug number?

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

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Re: Tool for document management

[Neil Watson]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2007 at 09:57:35PM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:

I use XEMacs daily to produce LaTeX documents.  I have frequent need
to search my archives of material I have written in the past, and I
use grep for this purpose.  It is difficult for me to imagine an
advantage offered by OpenOffice which would compensate for the
inability to make use of grep in searching my archives.


   Not having to learn LaTeX would be the head of my list.  While I am sure


Latex is very easy to learn.  It is similar to HTML.  Have learned LaTeX
last year and having used word processors since Wordperfect 5.1 I
definitely prefer LaTeX.  I can produce higher quality papers (work or
academic) in less time than ever before.

With TeX and LaTeX and its ilk the templates actually work.  I can use
the same template for all of my reports and they always look the same.
There are no annoying format inconsistencies that are so common with
Word and OpenOffice.

--
Neil Watson | Debian Linux
System Administrator| Uptime 10 days
http://watson-wilson.ca


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Re: Tool for document management

[Andrei Popescu]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2007 at 09:57:35PM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:
 
> Not having to learn LaTeX would be the head of my list.  While I am sure
> it is a fine and dandy language for what it does and I know there are people
> who have produced some nice text using it I do not wish to learn a third
> computer language just to write fiction in my native language.  What
> OpenOffice offers is convenience of visually representing what I want with a
> low barrier to entry.
 
Did you try lyx? Just going through the tutorial should give you an 
idea.

Regards,
Andrei
-- 
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
(Albert Einstein)


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Re: Tool for document management

[Jochen Schulz]

Steve Lamb:
> 
> However the decision came down to one factor which I did not list.  When I
> was reviewing SVN one thing popped into my head over and over, "Why Perl!?"

What does Subversion have to do with Perl?

(Not that I think your decision is wrong, I just don't know what you're
referring to.)

J.
-- 
Television advertisements are the apothesis of twentieth century culture.
[Agree]   [Disagree]
 


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Re: Tool for document management

[Russell L. Harris]

* Steve Lamb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [070925 00:07]:

> You do realize that the document format we're talking about is an
> OASIS open document standard, right?
> 
> http://www.oasis-open.org/home/index.php

My error.

RLH


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Re: Tool for document management

[Steve Lamb]

Osamu Aoki wrote:
> I hear hg (Mercurial at http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/ ) is better on
> Windows as modern distributed VCS than git.  Both of these are good if
> you want to record revision off-line and sync with server occasionally.
> But these are new...

Just for the record for those who have been following this discussion I
decided to go with Osamu's suggestion of Mercurial.  It seemed to meet most of
my needs as well as they could be met.  It also seems insanely trivial to get
started in.  While I do not really plan to use the distributed revisions there
might be a need for it as one of the machines I plan to use is a laptop.

However the decision came down to one factor which I did not list.  When I
was reviewing SVN one thing popped into my head over and over, "Why Perl!?"
As anyone who's been around this list and read my many long-winded posts on
scripting know I am a total Python geek.  Mercurial is written in Python.  So
while I have no doubts about SVN's suitability for the task at hand I decided
to go with the tool written in the language I trust and, if needed, can hack.  
:)

Thank you everyone for a wonderful discussion.  Even you, Ron.  I know you
were trying to help and I apologize for having gotten a tad snippy.

-- 
 Steve C. Lamb | But who decides what they dream?
   PGP Key: 8B6E99C5   |   And dream I do...
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Re: Tool for document management

[Steve Lamb]

Russell L. Harris wrote:
> As a writer and programmer, it appears to me that it is OpenOffice --
> rather than SVN -- which is unsuited for the application which is the
> basis for this thread.

While I do agree that OOo seems to be the culprit here I do not follow you
down the same path of reasoning.

> I use XEMacs daily to produce LaTeX documents.  I have frequent need
> to search my archives of material I have written in the past, and I
> use grep for this purpose.  It is difficult for me to imagine an
> advantage offered by OpenOffice which would compensate for the
> inability to make use of grep in searching my archives.

Not having to learn LaTeX would be the head of my list.  While I am sure
it is a fine and dandy language for what it does and I know there are people
who have produced some nice text using it I do not wish to learn a third
computer language just to write fiction in my native language.  What
OpenOffice offers is convenience of visually representing what I want with a
low barrier to entry.

> Moreover, I learned the hard way the potential cost of a proprietary
> file system for document storage, when, as the calendar rolled over
> from A.D 1999 to A.D. 2000, M$ Word 5.0 for DOS began writing garbage
> to document files (one of the few genuine Y2K bugs).  It was that
> experience which prompted my rapid migration to GNU/Linux and EMacs.

This is where you and I diverge wildly.  You do realize that the document
format we're talking about is an OASIS open document standard, right?

http://www.oasis-open.org/home/index.php

Specifically the OpenDocument specification as described here:

http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/index.php#opendocumentv1.1

So I am not, nor have I ever, been dealing with a proprietary document
format.  Any more than LaTeX.  Now, OOo's implementation of that standard
being hostile to the task at hand... that is a different matter which we agree
upon.  ;)

-- 
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   PGP Key: 8B6E99C5   |   And dream I do...
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Re: Tool for document management

[Russell L. Harris]

* Steve Lamb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [070924 23:21]:

> First off Word suffers from the same problem.  I found out the hard
> way on one of my scripting projects.  So there's precedent.  The
> second reason is that OOo developers have stated, many times, that
> the format's not designed to be manipulated by anything other than
> OOo so no consideration is given to either human readability or to
> the usefulness of other tools.  That, too, I found in reading up on
> putting ODTs in some sort of repository.

As a writer and programmer, it appears to me that it is OpenOffice --
rather than SVN -- which is unsuited for the application which is the
basis for this thread.

I use XEMacs daily to produce LaTeX documents.  I have frequent need
to search my archives of material I have written in the past, and I
use grep for this purpose.  It is difficult for me to imagine an
advantage offered by OpenOffice which would compensate for the
inability to make use of grep in searching my archives.

Moreover, I learned the hard way the potential cost of a proprietary
file system for document storage, when, as the calendar rolled over
from A.D 1999 to A.D. 2000, M$ Word 5.0 for DOS began writing garbage
to document files (one of the few genuine Y2K bugs).  It was that
experience which prompted my rapid migration to GNU/Linux and EMacs.

RLH


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Re: Tool for document management

[Steve Lamb]

Ron Johnson wrote:
> On 09/24/07 11:02, Osamu Aoki wrote:
>> Ron, why you are so negative on OOo?

> Negative?  Hardly.  I'm just wishing for new features, that's all.

Like text to columns in Calc without resorting to a plugin?  Seems like a
no-brainer.  :/

>> But it is long 1 line XML file w/o line break.  It is hard to see. (It
>> is useful though if you are desperate.) Thus, I said "not much useful".

> Ah, I see that.  :(

> Yet another OOo wishlist item.

One I think that will go unfulfilled.  First off Word suffers from the
same problem.  I found out the hard way on one of my scripting projects.  So
there's precedent.  The second reason is that OOo developers have stated, many
times, that the format's not designed to be manipulated by anything other than
OOo so no consideration is given to either human readability or to the
usefulness of other tools.  That, too, I found in reading up on putting ODTs
in some sort of repository.


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Re: Tool for document management

[Ron Johnson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 09/24/07 11:02, Osamu Aoki wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 24, 2007 at 02:50:32AM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:
>> On 09/24/07 02:13, Osamu Aoki wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> On Sun, Sep 23, 2007 at 04:29:46PM -0700, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
>> [snip]
 The problem being that you won't get proper
 diffs between versions where you've only changes a few words. I don't
 really know the inner workings of the various VCS, but have a couple
 suggestions. 
>>> In theory, OO documents are zipped archive of XML and graphics files.
>>> You can make diff between XML but I do not think you can use diff
>>> efficiently.  If you have graphic files etc, diff on them may not be
>>> much useful.
>> It's too bad that OOo doesn't let you specify "uncompressed" as a
>> document attribute.  Or even have a "directory-as-document" mode.
> 
> Ron, why you are so negative on OOo?

Negative?  Hardly.  I'm just wishing for new features, that's all.

> Why we need "uncompressed" when we can make it "uncompressed"?
> 
> Here is what I meant by "diff between XML":

Not automated.  The svn plugin mentioned by Steve Lamb seems darned
useful, though.

>  * I made 2 revisions of ODT doc w/o picture.
>  * Used fastjar -x and extracted its XML files.
>  * Took wdiff -l of 2 version of content.xml
> 
> Yes, it tells me what has been changed.
> 
> But it is long 1 line XML file w/o line break.  It is hard to see. (It
> is useful though if you are desperate.) Thus, I said "not much useful".

Ah, I see that.  :(

Yet another OOo wishlist item.

> I know MS word file can be compared with some special tool (I have seen
> it mostly used by lawyer.  It is basically nice color diff.)  I just do
> not know similar tool for ODT.  (Anyone know tool for this??)
> 
> But if someone just want to exchange doc with others for proofreading,
> ODT history will do it just the same way as MS Word.
> 
> (Anytime you need so much detailed REV control, you use hand written XML
> or LaTeX, I think.)
> 
> So SVN or CVS will do good job for the purpose the original poster said.
> 
> After all it is one man backup solution issue.

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

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Re: Tool for document management

[Osamu Aoki]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2007 at 02:50:32AM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On 09/24/07 02:13, Osamu Aoki wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On Sun, Sep 23, 2007 at 04:29:46PM -0700, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> [snip]
> > 
> >> The problem being that you won't get proper
> >> diffs between versions where you've only changes a few words. I don't
> >> really know the inner workings of the various VCS, but have a couple
> >> suggestions. 
> > 
> > In theory, OO documents are zipped archive of XML and graphics files.
> > You can make diff between XML but I do not think you can use diff
> > efficiently.  If you have graphic files etc, diff on them may not be
> > much useful.
> 
> It's too bad that OOo doesn't let you specify "uncompressed" as a
> document attribute.  Or even have a "directory-as-document" mode.

Ron, why you are so negative on OOo?

Why we need "uncompressed" when we can make it "uncompressed"?

Here is what I meant by "diff between XML":

 * I made 2 revisions of ODT doc w/o picture.
 * Used fastjar -x and extracted its XML files.
 * Took wdiff -l of 2 version of content.xml

Yes, it tells me what has been changed.

But it is long 1 line XML file w/o line break.  It is hard to see. (It
is useful though if you are desperate.) Thus, I said "not much useful".

I know MS word file can be compared with some special tool (I have seen
it mostly used by lawyer.  It is basically nice color diff.)  I just do
not know similar tool for ODT.  (Anyone know tool for this??)

But if someone just want to exchange doc with others for proofreading,
ODT history will do it just the same way as MS Word.

(Anytime you need so much detailed REV control, you use hand written XML
or LaTeX, I think.)

So SVN or CVS will do good job for the purpose the original poster said.

After all it is one man backup solution issue.

Osamu


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Re: Tool for document management

[Rogelio Bastardo]

I'm coming into this conversation late, but judging my the subject line 
of your email, I'm guessing that this tool might be helpful.


http://www.knowledgetree.com/try-now

Someone in my LUG uses it for his company, and he seems to be very 
pleased with it.  The open source version, he says, does everything he 
needs.



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Re: Tool for document management

[Steve Lamb]

Ron Johnson wrote:
> It's too bad that OOo doesn't let you specify "uncompressed" as a
> document attribute.  Or even have a "directory-as-document" mode.

That would be the best of both worlds.  KOffice does allow such a thing
for OASIS documents.  However from what I've read it is not as adept at the
format itself.  There's also a plugin floating around that will save the file
uncompressed.  However it is for SVN only and only for Linux and OSX.


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Re: Tool for document management

[Ron Johnson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 09/24/07 02:13, Osamu Aoki wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Sun, Sep 23, 2007 at 04:29:46PM -0700, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
[snip]
> 
>> The problem being that you won't get proper
>> diffs between versions where you've only changes a few words. I don't
>> really know the inner workings of the various VCS, but have a couple
>> suggestions. 
> 
> In theory, OO documents are zipped archive of XML and graphics files.
> You can make diff between XML but I do not think you can use diff
> efficiently.  If you have graphic files etc, diff on them may not be
> much useful.

It's too bad that OOo doesn't let you specify "uncompressed" as a
document attribute.  Or even have a "directory-as-document" mode.

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

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Re: Tool for document management

[Stefan Monnier]

> I have been using Subversion for this very application for several
> years; it works well.

Most revision control systems will do the job.  And most of the post-CVS
revision control systems (other than Subversion) also allow you to commit
locally before sending the commit to the remote server.  They also all
(except for Subversion again, AFAIK) keep track of merges, in case you use
branches.
All in all, Subversion is probably the least flexible of the new tools.
Of course, it doesn't mean it's bad, just that it's worth taking a look
at alternatives.

> Subversion doesn't care; it handles any file type, including binaries.

The problem is in what is meant by "handle".  Being able to store and
retrieve arbitrary revisions is easy.  Doing it half-efficiently with binary
data is terribly hard.

But the main problem is how to do merges since the merge algorithm
necessarily needs to understand something about the structure of the file.
In general, it requires intelligence.  In the case of OOs files, you'll need
to ask OOo to (help you) do the merge.

> or for revisions made to dozens of documents.  But Subversion uses a
> "diff" technique, so the size of the repository grows very little from
> one revision to the next, unless you are adding much new material.  

A diff between two compressed versions of very similar files may still be
just as big as the compressed file.

> And with Subversion, you always can go back to any previous version of
> any document.  You can return even to a previous version of a document
> which you have removed from the repository; this is a consequence of

All revision control systems can do that, even the ancient ones.
 

Stefan


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Re: Tool for document management

[Osamu Aoki]

Hi,

On Sun, Sep 23, 2007 at 04:29:46PM -0700, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 22, 2007 at 08:26:59AM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:
> > Hello,
> > I am looking for a tool to help me maintain a backup of a writing 
> > project.
> >  Being a programmer my first instinct is to use something along the lines of
> > rcs/cvs.  I was thinking of svn since I have a project on Google Code and 
> > have
> > the tools installed on one of the machines on which I would do a part of the
> > writing.  However in attempting to answer this question for myself with 
> > Google
> > searches I ran across a message in a mailing list which said that version
> > controls designed for software might not be the best for documents.
> > 
> > What I want is the following:
> 
> steve, several have pointed out how svn would work for you, but Ron
> made the point that it might not work so well with .odt as they are
> zipped files (I think). 

Yep, call it zip or jar file.

> The problem being that you won't get proper
> diffs between versions where you've only changes a few words. I don't
> really know the inner workings of the various VCS, but have a couple
> suggestions. 

In theory, OO documents are zipped archive of XML and graphics files.
You can make diff between XML but I do not think you can use diff
efficiently.  If you have graphic files etc, diff on them may not be
much useful.

> 1) depending on your requirements in terms of formatting and so forth,
>you could save in a different file format. I think(!) without
>looking that the earlier versions of openoffice saves were not
>compressed, so you may be able to "save as" and earlier version and
>essentially work around that. Or you could use .rtf or .txt or
>whatever, again depending on whether you need support for
>formatting and so forth during the writing stage. 

Yes but that loses info and extra work.  (You can always get text out
from old odt files quite easily if you need it later for some reason.)

> 2) ISTM that it would be darn straightforward to get a VCS to handle
>zip files properly -- unzipping the current repo version and
>comparing to the new incoming version and then zipping the whole thing
>up. I know it doesn't help your current situation much, but once of
>the "still in development" VCS'es might be able to incorporate this
>feature right away. I'm thinking particular of Darcs which is still
>heavily worked on, I think, and being written in Haskell should be
>subject to fairly quickly adding a feature like this. Might be
>worth a shot. 

But why let the generic VCS do something which it is not designed for.
Just let them store old files as they are designed for.

I suggest a bit more practical solution using readily available
functions.

Whatever editor you use (OO Write or even MS Word), they provide change
history function.  You save files as is into VCS with history enabled.

You retrieve the latest non-broken file and you get history in it.

Osamu


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Re: Tool for document management

[Benjamin A'Lee]

On Sun, Sep 23, 2007 at 04:29:46PM -0700, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> 2) ISTM that it would be darn straightforward to get a VCS to handle
>zip files properly -- unzipping the current repo version and
>comparing to the new incoming version and then zipping the whole thing
>up. I know it doesn't help your current situation much, but once of
>the "still in development" VCS'es might be able to incorporate this
>feature right away. I'm thinking particular of Darcs which is still
>heavily worked on, I think, and being written in Haskell should be
>subject to fairly quickly adding a feature like this. Might be
>worth a shot. 

Anything that supports prehooks and posthooks should manage it;
mercurial can, IIRC (and there's an example of something like it in the
hgrc manpage), and darcs should be able to once the next version is
released (it has prehooks, whereas the current version only has
posthooks). bzr, git, svn should all be able to manage it too.

-- 
Benjamin A'Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://subvert.org.uk/~bma/


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Re: Tool for document management

[Andrew Sackville-West]

On Wed, Aug 22, 2007 at 08:26:59AM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:
> Hello,
> I am looking for a tool to help me maintain a backup of a writing project.
>  Being a programmer my first instinct is to use something along the lines of
> rcs/cvs.  I was thinking of svn since I have a project on Google Code and have
> the tools installed on one of the machines on which I would do a part of the
> writing.  However in attempting to answer this question for myself with Google
> searches I ran across a message in a mailing list which said that version
> controls designed for software might not be the best for documents.
> 
> What I want is the following:

steve, several have pointed out how svn would work for you, but Ron
made the point that it might not work so well with .odt as they are
zipped files (I think). The problem being that you won't get proper
diffs between versions where you've only changes a few words. I don't
really know the inner workings of the various VCS, but have a couple
suggestions. 

1) depending on your requirements in terms of formatting and so forth,
   you could save in a different file format. I think(!) without
   looking that the earlier versions of openoffice saves were not
   compressed, so you may be able to "save as" and earlier version and
   essentially work around that. Or you could use .rtf or .txt or
   whatever, again depending on whether you need support for
   formatting and so forth during the writing stage. 

2) ISTM that it would be darn straightforward to get a VCS to handle
   zip files properly -- unzipping the current repo version and
   comparing to the new incoming version and then zipping the whole thing
   up. I know it doesn't help your current situation much, but once of
   the "still in development" VCS'es might be able to incorporate this
   feature right away. I'm thinking particular of Darcs which is still
   heavily worked on, I think, and being written in Haskell should be
   subject to fairly quickly adding a feature like this. Might be
   worth a shot. 

hth

A


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Re: Tool for document management

[Russell L. Harris]

* Steve Lamb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [070923 09:42]:

> I am looking for a tool to help me maintain a backup of a writing
> project.  Being a programmer my first instinct is to use something
> along the lines of rcs/cvs.  I was thinking of svn since I have a
> project on Google Code and have the tools installed on one of the
> machines on which I would do a part of the writing.

I have been using Subversion for this very application for several
years; it works well.



> However in attempting to answer this question for myself with Google
> searches I ran across a message in a mailing list which said that
> version controls designed for software might not be the best for
> documents.

Humbug!  Read the Subversion manual; in the introduction, it addresses
the matter.



> What I want is the following:
> 
> =>o backup my work

As simple as executing the command:

composition_machine: $ svn commit -m ''

from a terminal on the composition machine.  

Because of the "diff" technique used by Subversion (see below), you
may commit a hundred times an hour, if you wish, the only penalty
being running up the revision counter (which is of no real
consequence).  If no change has been made to the documents under the
control of Subversion, the commit command does nothing; this means
that you could, if you wished, use "cron" to periodically commit.



> on a machine separate from the machine(s) I'll be working on.

Simply create the repository on the other machine.  This means that
the other machine must be running whenever you wish to commit a
revision.  

But there is no need to have physical access to the repository
machine, other than to power it up; it is not necessary to log in at
the keyboard, at least if the repository machine is running GNU/Linux.
This is because Subversion is able to commit using ssh, which allows
remote login (and does so automatically, if you have ssh properly set
up with a passphrase).  You also can shut down the repository machine
via ssh; so there really is no need for physical access, other than to
power up the machine.

And if you wish to backup to a medium such as a USB flash memory
stick, simply plug the USB flash stick into the repository machine and
then, from your composition machine, open a ssh channel over which you
can issue backup commands:

composition_machine: $ ssh repository_machine

repository_machine: $

Then, via ssh from the composition machine, backup the repository to
flash with the Subversion "hot-backup.py" script:

repository_machine: $ ./hot-backup.py /repository/ /media/flasha1



> =>o sync across multiple machines.

As simple as executing the command:

another_machine: $ svn update

from whichever machine you wish to bring up-to-date.


 
> =>o handle non-text data as well as some textual data.  The main file
> that is going to change most often is an OOo document (odt).  I'll
> also be storing any related files including Mindmap files (mm) and
> Writer's Cafe files.

Subversion doesn't care; it handles any file type, including binaries.



> =>o version might be nice in case I want to back out of large portions
> of the document or refer to previous verbage I had removed and want
> to reconsider.

Subversion maintains repository versions, rather than document
versions.  A single commit to the repository increments the repository
version, whether the commit was for the revision of a single document
or for revisions made to dozens of documents.  But Subversion uses a
"diff" technique, so the size of the repository grows very little from
one revision to the next, unless you are adding much new material.  

And with Subversion, you always can go back to any previous version of
any document.  You can return even to a previous version of a document
which you have removed from the repository; this is a consequence of
the Subversion approach of viewing a revision as a state of the
repository, rather than as a state of a document: removing a document
from the control of Subversion does not change the history of the
repository.


 
> =>o must be accessible on Windows and Linux (Debian/KUbuntu)

Subversion works on Window$.



> At first glance I am leaning for throwing Subversion on my main box
> so I can sync the other two machines off of it.  

I suggest that you put the Subversion repository on a machine other
than the composition machine (but do use a reliable drive!).  This
way, if your composition machine fails, you haven't lost the
repository.  And this automatically gives you two copies of your work;
or even three copies, if you export the repository to a directory on
the repository machine, and update that "working copy" upon each
commit.  If the working copy on the repository machine is on a drive
separate from the drive which holds the repository, then you have
three copies of your work, each on a separate drive, and with almost no
hassle.

But even if you should happen to lose the repository, it can be
restored from the backup on the USB flas

Re: Tool for document management

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 10:46:59 -0500, Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

>> At first glance I am leaning for throwing Subversion on my main box
>> so I can sync the other two machines off of it.  Not sure if there is
>> something better suited to the task or that svn would be particularly
>> ill suited.

> How big (in bytes) is this writing project?

> Unless it's got lots of images, it shouldn't be that big.
> (Uncompressed, the text of the KJV Bible is only (decimal) 4.4MB, and
> compressed it's (decimal) 1.3MB.)

> So why couldn't you tar up your directory into proj_.tar
> and rcp it to a couple of other computers?  (Since you use odt, no
> need to compress the tarball.)

Err. This would be suboptimal for a coding project, and perhaps
 also for a writing project.  Diffs between versions,  keeping track of
 change history, keeping different ending/plots variations going would
 also make use of branches.  Tagging a particular milestone, etc, all
 fit better with what Steve suggested than just throwing tar/zip files
 around.

Now, I do not have concrete suggestions beyond subversion, since
 one of the requirements was windows support, and I have no idea which
 source code management systems works well with windows.

manoj
-- 
All husbands are alike, but they have different faces so you can tell
them apart.
Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
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Re: Tool for document management

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 12:51:54 -0500, Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1

> On 09/23/07 12:30, Steve Lamb wrote:
>> Ron Johnson wrote:
>>> Asking questions and making comments are *not* arguing.
>> 
>> Ron, we've been over this.  Every time I ask a simple question on the
>> list someone, not always you granted, but someone takes me to task
>> about exactly what it is I want or why I am doing something this way
>> and not that way or why not just do it this completely different way
>> which in no way resembles what I've asked.  I don't ask for help on
>> this list often.  But every time, every single time, I have to play
>> this game with someone and I am tired of it.
>> 
>> Asking questions and making comments about something which addresses
>> my requirements is not arguing.  Asking questions and making comments
>> about something which does not at all address my requirements is,
>> well, if not arguing then maybe just annoying.

> Computer people are used to looking for alternative, simpler
> solutions.

"Make things as simple as they can be, but no simpler." In this
 case, I can see several use cases for a writing project to be similar
 to that of a coding project; and I suspect the versioning and synch
 solutions are likely to be similar.

Does git work on windows?

manoj
-- 
All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say
no. Susan Sontag
Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
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Re: Tool for document management

[Ron Johnson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 09/23/07 12:58, Osamu Aoki wrote:
[snip]
> 
>>  o handle non-text data as well as some textual data.  The main file that is
>> going to change most often is an OOo document (odt).  I'll also be storing 
>> any
>> related files including Mindmap files (mm) and Writer's Cafe files.
> 
> No problem.

How can a VCS handle zip files with any degree of efficiency?

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

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Re: Tool for document management

[Jochen Schulz]

Steve Lamb:

> I am looking for a tool to help me maintain a backup of a writing project.

I kept all my documents (PDF, PPT, DOC, OOo, Latex etc.) from university
in SVN while studying. Before I tried SVN, I had used unison but that
didn't scale well to more than two computers and I couldn't use it
without specific client software at all when using university computers
(SVN can be accessed via Apache).

I'd probably do that again today, I'd only consider trying svk or some
other distributed vcs because it is nice to be able to commit offline.

Of course, having your repository 24/7 accessible via the net helps a
lot.

J.
-- 
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[Agree]   [Disagree]
 


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Re: Tool for document management

[Osamu Aoki]

Hi,

On Wed, Aug 22, 2007 at 08:26:59AM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:
> Hello,
> I am looking for a tool to help me maintain a backup of a writing project.
>  Being a programmer my first instinct is to use something along the lines of
> rcs/cvs.  I was thinking of svn since I have a project on Google Code and have
> the tools installed on one of the machines on which I would do a part of the
> writing.  However in attempting to answer this question for myself with Google
> searches I ran across a message in a mailing list which said that version
> controls designed for software might not be the best for documents.
> 
> What I want is the following:
> 
>  o backup my work on a machine separate from the machine(s) I'll be working 
> on.

So you need at least one remote machine accessible from the net whic run
well supported VCS such as CVS, SVN, ...

>  o sync across multiple machines.

No problem.

>  o handle non-text data as well as some textual data.  The main file that is
> going to change most often is an OOo document (odt).  I'll also be storing any
> related files including Mindmap files (mm) and Writer's Cafe files.

No problem.

>  o version might be nice in case I want to back out of large portions of the
> document or refer to previous verbage I had removed and want to reconsider.

No problem if it is VCS.  (If simple sync like rsync etc, no)

>  o must be accessible on Windows and Linux (Debian/KUbuntu)

CVS and SVN do it OK.

> At first glance I am leaning for throwing Subversion on my main box so I
> can sync the other two machines off of it.  Not sure if there is something
> better suited to the task or that svn would be particularly ill suited.

No.

The only negative thing is that you need to have connection to the
central server all the time when you back up history.

You can not back up history locally and send them to central server
afterwards.

If I were you, I may consider using distributed VCS git (git-core
package) with one repository serving as the  CVS like centrarized
server.  But that is just me trying new thing at this moment.

I hear hg (Mercurial at http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/ ) is better on
Windows as modern distributed VCS than git.  Both of these are good if
you want to record revision off-line and sync with server occasionally.
But these are new...

Osamu


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Re: Tool for document management

[Ron Johnson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 09/23/07 12:30, Steve Lamb wrote:
> Ron Johnson wrote:
>> Asking questions and making comments are *not* arguing.
> 
> Ron, we've been over this.  Every time I ask a simple question on the list
> someone, not always you granted, but someone takes me to task about exactly
> what it is I want or why I am doing something this way and not that way or why
> not just do it this completely different way which in no way resembles what
> I've asked.  I don't ask for help on this list often.  But every time, every
> single time, I have to play this game with someone and I am tired of it.
> 
> Asking questions and making comments about something which addresses my
> requirements is not arguing.  Asking questions and making comments about
> something which does not at all address my requirements is, well, if not
> arguing then maybe just annoying.

Computer people are used to looking for alternative, simpler solutions.

In this specific instance, though, I should have read more closely
the word "machine(s)".

>> I think you drank too much coffee this morning.
> 
> No, just tired of having this happen again on this list.  I swear someone
> could ask a simple yes/no question on D-U and someone will take joy in
> answering everything but yes or no.
> 
> "Does the sun rise in the east?"
> 
> "Well, not always.  Depends on which planet you're on."

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

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Re: Tool for document management

[Steve Lamb]

Ron Johnson wrote:
> Asking questions and making comments are *not* arguing.

Ron, we've been over this.  Every time I ask a simple question on the list
someone, not always you granted, but someone takes me to task about exactly
what it is I want or why I am doing something this way and not that way or why
not just do it this completely different way which in no way resembles what
I've asked.  I don't ask for help on this list often.  But every time, every
single time, I have to play this game with someone and I am tired of it.

Asking questions and making comments about something which addresses my
requirements is not arguing.  Asking questions and making comments about
something which does not at all address my requirements is, well, if not
arguing then maybe just annoying.

> I think you drank too much coffee this morning.

No, just tired of having this happen again on this list.  I swear someone
could ask a simple yes/no question on D-U and someone will take joy in
answering everything but yes or no.

"Does the sun rise in the east?"

"Well, not always.  Depends on which planet you're on."

-- 
 Steve C. Lamb | But who decides what they dream?
   PGP Key: 8B6E99C5   |   And dream I do...
---+-



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Re: Tool for document management

[Jude DaShiell]

rcs wasn't originally intended to manage software.  It was originally 
intended as a documents manager then branched out to be able to manage 
anything that could be stored by way of electronic archiving.  I'm not 
familiar with the historis of the newer revision control systems though so 
won't comment comparatively on them.





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Re: Tool for document management

[Ron Johnson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 09/23/07 11:45, Steve Lamb wrote:
> Ron Johnson wrote:
>>> Tarballs don't sync across machines, they overwrite.  Also it's a matter
> 
>> I don't mean sync, I mean copy.
> 
> I know what you meant.  But you are flatly ignoring my requirement for
> syncing.  I make an edit on Machine A and toss-a-tarball onto whatever
> machine(s) I decide.  Then I make an edit on Machine B and do the same.  Then
> I remembered I had edits from machine A, pull them down and, whoops,
> overwritten.  Toss-a-tarball works fine if you're working on a single machine
> and want to just do a simplistic backup.  It falls apart when you add more
> machines, maybe people, into the mix.  That's why version controls showed up
> in the first place.
> 
>> What's wrong with toss-a-tarball?  Having mmdd_hhmm in the file
>> name is a perfectly valid method of keeping versions separate.
> 
> See above.  Also you're presuming that the trees are going to be identical
> on the multiple machines where they might not be.  So please, can you let it
> go?  I have reasons why I don't want to go that route and don't feel like
> arguing about it.

Asking questions and making comments are *not* arguing.

>I stated my requirements, tarball doesn't even address most
> of them, out of the picture.

I think you drank too much coffee this morning.

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

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Re: Tool for document management

[Steve Lamb]

Ron Johnson wrote:
>> Tarballs don't sync across machines, they overwrite.  Also it's a matter

> I don't mean sync, I mean copy.

I know what you meant.  But you are flatly ignoring my requirement for
syncing.  I make an edit on Machine A and toss-a-tarball onto whatever
machine(s) I decide.  Then I make an edit on Machine B and do the same.  Then
I remembered I had edits from machine A, pull them down and, whoops,
overwritten.  Toss-a-tarball works fine if you're working on a single machine
and want to just do a simplistic backup.  It falls apart when you add more
machines, maybe people, into the mix.  That's why version controls showed up
in the first place.

> What's wrong with toss-a-tarball?  Having mmdd_hhmm in the file
> name is a perfectly valid method of keeping versions separate.

See above.  Also you're presuming that the trees are going to be identical
on the multiple machines where they might not be.  So please, can you let it
go?  I have reasons why I don't want to go that route and don't feel like
arguing about it.  I stated my requirements, tarball doesn't even address most
of them, out of the picture.

-- 
 Steve C. Lamb | But who decides what they dream?
   PGP Key: 8B6E99C5   |   And dream I do...
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Re: Tool for document management

[Ron Johnson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 09/23/07 11:10, Steve Lamb wrote:
> Ron Johnson wrote:
>> How big (in bytes) is this writing project?
> 
> Right now, tiny.
> 
>> So why couldn't you tar up your directory into proj_.tar
>> and rcp it to a couple of other computers?  (Since you use odt, no
>> need to compress the tarball.)
> 
>>>  o sync across multiple machines.
>   
> 
> Tarballs don't sync across machines, they overwrite.  Also it's a matter

I don't mean sync, I mean copy.

> of convenience.  I've gone down the toss-a-tarball (rar, actually) around
> method over a decade ago and didn't much care for it then nor to replicate it 
> now.

What's wrong with toss-a-tarball?  Having mmdd_hhmm in the file
name is a perfectly valid method of keeping versions separate.

Unless your bandwidth is on the extreme end of small.

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

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Re: Tool for document management

[Steve Lamb]

Ron Johnson wrote:
> How big (in bytes) is this writing project?

Right now, tiny.

> So why couldn't you tar up your directory into proj_.tar
> and rcp it to a couple of other computers?  (Since you use odt, no
> need to compress the tarball.)

>>  o sync across multiple machines.
  

Tarballs don't sync across machines, they overwrite.  Also it's a matter
of convenience.  I've gone down the toss-a-tarball (rar, actually) around
method over a decade ago and didn't much care for it then nor to replicate it 
now.

-- 
 Steve C. Lamb | But who decides what they dream?
   PGP Key: 8B6E99C5   |   And dream I do...
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Re: Tool for document management

[Ron Johnson]

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On 08/22/07 10:26, Steve Lamb wrote:
> Hello,
> I am looking for a tool to help me maintain a backup of a writing project.
>  Being a programmer my first instinct is to use something along the lines of
> rcs/cvs.  I was thinking of svn since I have a project on Google Code and have
> the tools installed on one of the machines on which I would do a part of the
> writing.  However in attempting to answer this question for myself with Google
> searches I ran across a message in a mailing list which said that version
> controls designed for software might not be the best for documents.
> 
> What I want is the following:
> 
>  o backup my work on a machine separate from the machine(s) I'll be working 
> on.
> 
>  o sync across multiple machines.
> 
>  o handle non-text data as well as some textual data.  The main file that is
> going to change most often is an OOo document (odt).  I'll also be storing any
> related files including Mindmap files (mm) and Writer's Cafe files.
> 
>  o version might be nice in case I want to back out of large portions of the
> document or refer to previous verbage I had removed and want to reconsider.
> 
>  o must be accessible on Windows and Linux (Debian/KUbuntu)
> 
> At first glance I am leaning for throwing Subversion on my main box so I
> can sync the other two machines off of it.  Not sure if there is something
> better suited to the task or that svn would be particularly ill suited.

How big (in bytes) is this writing project?

Unless it's got lots of images, it shouldn't be that big.
(Uncompressed, the text of the KJV Bible is only (decimal) 4.4MB,
and compressed it's (decimal) 1.3MB.)

So why couldn't you tar up your directory into proj_.tar
and rcp it to a couple of other computers?  (Since you use odt, no
need to compress the tarball.)

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

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Re: Tool for document management

[Benjamin A'Lee]

On Wed, Aug 22, 2007 at 08:26:59AM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:
> At first glance I am leaning for throwing Subversion on my main box so I
> can sync the other two machines off of it.  Not sure if there is something
> better suited to the task or that svn would be particularly ill suited.

I can't see any particular reason why svn (or any other RCS) would be
bad for documents, assuming they're plaintext (PDFs and OpenOffice/MS
Office/OpenDocument might be slightly more problematic, since they're
binary, but only relative to plaintext as svn and most other RCSs handle
binary perfectly adequately).

It's common practice for software projects to keep their documentation
in revision control along with the software, and for example IkiWiki
 (and I believe other wiki-type systems too) uses
RCSs as a backend for what is basically documentation (in this case a
website, but the file formats are basically the same).

-- 
Benjamin A'Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://subvert.org.uk/~bma/
"To the person who ate the contents of the container labeled 'James' -
warning, it was my biology experiment" - from a note on a students' fridge.


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