On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 22:36, 2web3 <sergiu.r...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I have a somewhat generic question related to editors in general. I > feel this discomfort with current state of document creation. Let me > explain.
To summarize: The question is partly about how to create formatted documents, and also partly about how to manage various aspects of collaboration. In addition to the types of document creation and repository software discussed below, there are applications in Google Docs and in Sugar, the OLPC software, that allow multiple users to edit a document at the same time. Each has a cursor at a separate location, and each has control of keyboard, fonts, and styles at their respective locations. Sugar also supports collaboration in art, music, presentations, programming, and other functions. FLOSS Manuals provides collaborative publishing applications on the Web. I have taken part in several FM book sprints. http://en.flossmanuals.net/write > In the beginning there were just simple text editors. Then they got > more sophisticated, visual, WYSIWYG, culminating with products such as > MS Word and alike. This is all great, but the document is stored in > individual files (silos) and is hard to share and collaborate with a > team. > Of course, you can send via e-mail, but then the proliferation > of versions and comments makes this kind of collaboration difficult. How much do you know about author and version tracking, commenting, and merge capabilities in Word, Acrobat, and other software? I have used them many times to send out a document for comments and integrate the responses. > Then came centralized systems such as SharePoint that allow to store > the documents in one place, lock the document so that only one person > can edit it. However this again is far from perfect: I cannot easily > track the history, who did what, what has really changed. And I still > cannot properly comment on the document. But is better than e-mail. There are other document repositories that track version history. Some of them provide understandable diffs. A few allow merges from more than one source, in much the same way that branched program code trees can be merged. > Then wikis came along. They made a whole bunch of stuff easy > (versioning with diff, easy access to information, search, permissions > etc). But they lack several important features a modern editor has: > * They are not truly WYSIWYG. Any wiki is light-years behind Word > from editing capabilities. This is a major impediment why wikis are > not widely used in our organization. An inherent limitation of HTML. > * They are not easy to work with in offline mode (when traveling on > a plane) So you need a checkout function? > * They generally rapidly degrade in performance as more users use a > wiki installation Wikipedia is a counterexample. I think the reality is that poorly administered Wikis degrade in performance. > * It is not easy to just send a wiki "document" to somebody, > especially to an external partner, when the wiki is on intranet. It > has to be opened to external users, security policies need to be put > in place etc. E-Mail is just light years easier in this respect. There are Wiki extraction tools available that can take a list of pages and create an archive that preserves links between pages that are included. This is how Wikipedia subsets are created for inclusion on OLPC school servers. > * Wikis, being web application, poorly support rich formatting that > we've come to expect from a Word doc. I cannot easily take a wiki > "document", print to PDF and send it to external partner - usually the > document will not look professional. And to make it look professional > in wiki will take way more time and resources than just to write it > from scratch in Word. Normally I would not put a Wiki meant for regular use into print, but I can see how such a use can be organized. I have a similar issue with text files provided by engineers and other Subject-Matter Experts. Usually the first task is to remove all manual formatting and substitute tables and styles. > So here's my dilemma... Can anybody help me point out to a solution? > Or if you experience the same issue - share your feelings as well, let > me know that I'm not suffering alone. We face a new issue on top of these. What are the effective methods of presenting learning materials in software rather than in linear text or hypertext? > > > -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://www.earthtreasury.org/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to wikieducator@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to wikieducator-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
