Re: Please brainstorm: Word-processor compatible with version control
On Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:41:10 +0100, Jochen Schulz wrote:
> Hendrik Boom:
>>
>> I'd like a word processor compatible with version control systems
>> (hereafter abbreviated VCS) Having been duly impressed for decades now
>> how useful VCSs are for programming, I'd like to use them for writing as
>> well.
>
> I wonder why you didn't even mention LaTeX in your post. Don't you know
> it or don't you consider it because you need MS Word documents?
I have no love for Word, and suspect the world might be better off without
it. But my market doesn't share my opinion. Being able to export to
.odt, and then using OpenOffice to export to Word might work. But I don't
think LaTex really does that either. Am I wrong?
>
>> I use monotone as my VCS. but I don't suppose my trials are unique to
>> monotone.
>
> I kept my whole university-related material in SVN and I wrote my
> diploma thesis in LaTeX. I loved it.
>
>> (3) Word processors that leave text in a human-readable form (properly
>> word-wrapped, for example) cause insertion of a single character (such
>> as a spelling change) to affect the layout of entire paragraphs.
>
> You cannot avoid that except by using linebreaks as paragraphs and have
> your editor do optical linewrapping.
Another approach would be to use linebreaks as spaces and to have
something explicit as paragraph breaks. It the editor did optical line
unwrapping, this might actually work.
>
>> I'm currently using an ad-hoc notation in UTF-8, edited in emacs,
>> formatted by homebrew code.
>
> Why don't you use existing markup languages like Restrucured Text? I
> started to use it to write blog postings (pyblosxom) and after only a
> short time I got used to it.
The existing markup languages seem to have too much in them. And there's
little agreement between them. Having yet another one -- but under my
control -- makes it possible to keeep it simple and hand-write
translaters to other formats as needed. If there was something standard
and well-supported, it would be damned attractive.
>
>> Isn't there something that already does most of what I really need?
>
> To me, it sounds like your main problem is to find a smart-enough merge
> program. Hm, I thought there should be plenty, but apt-cache searching
> "merge editor" didn't reveal any useful packages.
Maybe that's the real problem, yes. Now there is a way of merging that
could work -- take the texts to be merged, break them up one word to a
lne, do the merge on that, and then put lines back together. If I could
pack that into a version-control system, and make sure it does this only
to the proper kinds of files, that would work.
-- hendrik
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