Re: Organizing and taming hectic Academia work (faculty viewpoint)? Tips or a good guides sought after :)

[Bob Newell <bobnewell@bobnewell.net>]

"Julian Burgos" <julian@hafro.is> writes:

> b) I write the manuscript in org-mode.  Then I send the org-mode file to
> my coauthor.  Because the org-mode file is just a text file, my coauthor
> can use Word to edit it.  I ask him/her *not* to use "track changes" and
> to save the edited version also as a text file.  Then, when I receive it I
> use ediff in emacs to compare both documents and incorporate the edits I
> want.

Simple is best, and I wish I had thought of this simple idea before I
took an 87,000 word novel that I wrote in org-mode, output as ODT,
converted to DOCX, and then sent to an editor. I got back all the track
changes stuff and even worse, margin notes, and punctuation (like quotes
and ellipses) changed over to Word-ish characters.

It wasn't utterly useless but it created a lot of extra work, which
still isn't over. Next time I'll do as per above, tell her to just edit
the thing directly, write her notes in-line, and keep it as pure ASCII.

I really believe she thinks I was going to use Word to publish the
novel. Failure to communicate on my part. I could say lack of judgment
on her part but that's unfair; in her world, most everyone uses Word at
some stage in the process.

-- 
Bob Newell
Honolulu, Hawai`i
* Sent via Ma Gnus 0.12-Emacs 24.3-Linux Mint 17 *