[Tfug] Collaborative editing environments?

[Claude Rubinson]

On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 05:18:25PM -0500, Claude Rubinson wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm revisiting the issue of collaborative editing with my non-Unix
> using colleagues.  To date, I've usually just used OpenOffice (now
> LibreOffice), they use MS Word, and we just email drafts back and
> forth.  It works, but is rather painful and differences between the
> Windows and Linux and/or Word and OOo continually cause
> minor-but-annoying problems.
> 
> Google Docs seems to be continually improving and I'm thinking that it
> might be the best choice at this point.  We certainly don't need all
> the capabilities of a full-fledged word processor and Google Docs now
> has a pretty decent revision history mechanism.  I try to avoid the
> Google monolith when possible but if Google Docs supported Emacs-style
> keybindings, it would be a no-brainer.

In reviewing the various options discussed here, it seems that Google
Docs is probably the best choice.  It's fast, easy to use, and
supports a limited subset of word processor features--but exactly the
features that I'd use.  Google's done a good job.

But I also discovered that LibreOffice does support custom
keybindings.  (I don't know how I missed that previously.)  It's
somewhat limited but not severely so (not as flexible as some apps,
more flexible than many), and I now have Emacs-style navigation and
basic editing in Writer.  I suspect that in combinations with macros,
I could probably implement an Emacs-style environment.

So now I need to decide whether my desire for an Emacs-style
environment is stronger or weaker than my desire for easy
collaboration with colleagues.

Claude