[OS X TeX] Track Changes - Functionality for collaborative work

[William Adams]

On Feb 21, 2006, at 12:12 PM, Winfried Zettelmeyer wrote:
> the report can be submitted in pdf or in doc format, no  
> restrictions from this side.
> However, LyX as I just learned from the LyX homepage, is a document  
> processor in appearance just as complicated for a "WYSIWYG" as  
> LaTeX or, for that matter, TeXshop, even if the LyX site label it  
> WYSIWYM[ean]. So, no solution for the problem of frustrating my  
> team colleagues (until they are converted).

IME it's perceived as being no more difficult to use than Word ---  
the new 1.4 due out soon, and available as a pre-release even has  
change tracking.

> Another (4) possibility I have just tried is to produce a WORD file  
> from the pdf output file to have the reviewers use their customary  
> track changes tool on the doc text. However, I could not manage to  
> save my 215 page pdf file as doc. It took about 40 minutes and  
> Adobe Professional hung up (not responding) while saving the last  
> page. Of course, formatting, tables etc. would be gone in that doc  
> file anyway.

Actually, there're a couple of tools which will produce a page- 
formatted Word .doc out of a .pdf --- SolidPDF and BCL Drake (a plug- 
in for Acrobat which does tables as tables among other things), but  
file sizes can be huge if there're graphics, and the Word .doc is  
usually badly complicated and is difficult to edit and font encodings  
(for math) can be thorny.

There's a bit of commercial software recently reviewed in the  
Practical TeX Journal I think it was for converting from LaTeX to  
Word and back --- for that matter have you tried latex2rtf?

William

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications



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