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

[Ken Mankoff <mankoff@gmail.com>]

Hi Julian,

On 2015-06-10 at 10:16, Julian Burgos <julian@hafro.is> wrote:
> a) I first write in org-mode. Export to Word, either exporting first
> to ODT and then to Word, or to LaTex and then use pandoc to convert
> LaTex to Word. My coauthor can edit the document as he wishes, using
> the "Track changes" option. Then, I transcribe their edits back into
> the org-mode document. Advantage of this approach: your coauthor
> receives a clean word file, that could include figures, references,
> etc., and he/she uses the tools she likes to edit the file.
> Disadvantage: you have to manually incorporate the changes to the
> org-mode file each time there are edits.
>
> 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. Advantage of this approach: the merging
> of the documents is easy using ediff. Disadvantage: your coauthor has
> to edit a weird-looking document, with markup, code blocks, etc.

It seems like with a bit of extra (scriptable?) work you could remove both disadvantages.

Why can't you use method (a) above, and then DOCX -> Org via pandoc (with --accept-all option)?

I know pandoc introduce some of its own changes to the Org syntax but not the document itself. You can get around this. You can remove the pandoc-generated changes automagically so that only co-author changes appear in Org format, which you can then use with your (b) above and emacs ediff.

Original: Your Org source
A: Org -> DOCX for co-authors (using pandoc)
B: Org -> DOCX -> Org (using pandoc).
C: A -> Org (using pandoc and --accept-all-changes)
D: B-Original

The difference between B and Original are pandoc-introduced changes that you do not want. Ignore/remove these changes from C, call it D and then the difference between D and the Original are your co-author comments. Now your authors can edit DOCX with Track Changes and you can work on those edits with Emacs ediff.

  -k.