[texworks] Document Version-ing and synctex Previewing

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2011-06-21 at 11:57:53 -0700, Charlie Sharpsteen wrote:

 > On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 1:51 AM, Paul A Norman <paul.a.norman at gmail.com>wrote:
 > 
 > > Thanks Alain,
 > >
 > > That at first glance looks really really useful, and very well
 > > established and supported.
 > >
 > > Will explore it for our needs when I get time.
 > >
 > > I wonder of this sort of need is a possible aspect of the planned
 > > eventual Project Management side of TeXworks?
 > >
 > > Thanks again,
 > > paul
 > >
 > 
 > I played around with this a month ago---was thinking about
 > integrating libgit2 <http://libgit2.github.com/> into
 > TeXworks. This would provide a cross-platform built-in way to store
 > versioned information without requiring the user to install and
 > configure additional version control software. Most modern version
 > control systems can read Git repository dumps so it would be easy
 > to export projects to another system of the user's
 > preference. libgit2 still needs some work before it is fully ready
 > though---it needs a networking stack and the ability to do
 > tree-diffs between snapshots of a project. The networking stack is
 > being built as part of a Summer of Code project and so there should
 > be some exciting developments later this year.
 > 
 > I've always felt that TeX is starting to lag behind other document
 > preparation systems in the collaborative editing/review
 > area. Microsoft Word has had "track changes" and other review
 > systems for years. Apple just announced an Auto Save feature as
 > part of OS X 10.7 that automatically tracks snapshots and allows
 > one to browse the entire timeline of a document and drag document
 > components back and forth between versions. We definitely have the
 > tools to do similar things in the TeX world, but it is difficult to
 > get an entire team of people to buy into them. Asking someone to
 > learn TeX plus a version control system all at once can be a tough
 > sell. If version control was built into the editor in a transparent
 > fashion, it would be a lot easier for newcomers to deal with.

People are using TeX with version control systems for decades.  
It's Microsoft which always lags behind.

If you add libgit to TeXworks, will this help if people collaborate
with others who are using other VC systems already?  Wouldn't it be
better to add an interface to external VC systems?

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
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Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
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