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Thread: Collaborative Document sharing

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    Question Collaborative Document sharing

    I have a somewhat generic question related to editors in general. I feel this discomfort with current state of document creation. Let me explain.

    In the beginning there were just simple text editors. Then they got more sophisticated, visual, WYSIWYG, culminating with products such as MS Word and alike. This is all great, but the document is stored in individual files (silos) and is hard to share and collaborate with a team. Of course, you can send via e-mail, but then the proliferation of versions and comments makes this kind of collaboration difficult.

    Then came centralized systems such as SharePoint that allow to store the documents in one place, lock the document so that only one person can edit it. However this again is far from perfect: I cannot easily track the history, who did what, what has really changed. And I still cannot properly comment on the document. But is better than e-mail.

    Then wikis came along. They made a whole bunch of stuff easy (versioning with diff, easy access to information, search, permissions etc). But they lack several important features a modern editor has:
    * They are not truly WYSIWYG. Any wiki is light-years behind Word from editing capabilities. This is a major impediment why wikis are not widely used in our organization.
    * They are not easy to work with in offline mode (when traveling on a plane)
    * They generally rapidly degrade in performance as more users use a wiki installation
    * It is not easy to just send a wiki "document" to somebody, especially to an external partner, when the wiki is on intranet. It has to be opened to external users, security policies need to be put
    in place etc. E-Mail is just light years easier in this respect.
    * Wikis, being web application, poorly support rich formatting that we've come to expect from a Word doc. I cannot easily take a wiki "document", print to PDF and send it to external partner - usually the document will not look professional. And to make it look professional in wiki will take way more time and resources than just to write it from scratch in Word.

    So here's my dilemma... Can anybody help me point out to a solution? Or if you experience the same issue - share your feelings as well, let me know that I'm not suffering alone .

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    Re: Collaborative Document sharing

    Use git.
    Quote Originally Posted by Agent View Post
    ...every time Creative bring out a new card range their advertising makes it sound like they have discovered a way to insert a thousand Chuck Norris super dwarfs in your ears...

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    Don't feed the trolls... tiggerai's Avatar
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    Re: Collaborative Document sharing

    Have you tried GoogleDocs?

    I've used it realtime with a friend of mine to write documents at the same time... I believe it saves versioned changes too.

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    Re: Collaborative Document sharing

    That leaves you vendor reliant on Google, though. And Google Docs is... not exactly well polished.
    Quote Originally Posted by Agent View Post
    ...every time Creative bring out a new card range their advertising makes it sound like they have discovered a way to insert a thousand Chuck Norris super dwarfs in your ears...

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    Re: Collaborative Document sharing

    Office 2007 has something called Groove

    http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/groove/default.aspx

    You install it on all the PC's on the network and then the people on that network can create "work spaces"

    People are invited to share that work space. Once within that work space, you can create documents and when you save them they are updated on ALL the PC's in that Work Group.

    Multiple work groups can be created, from what I gather, and each set of documents within each different spaces and they are ENCRYPTED.

    If someone works away from the network, once logging back into the network, everyones documents are updated.

    Simples..../ pssthhk (/sucking teeth noise)

    Quote Originally Posted by Advice Trinity by Knoxville
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    Re: Collaborative Document sharing

    by the way... we're pleaased to welcome you to HEXUS.

    Please enjoy your stay and in no way abuse your access, so no pimping products or webpages.

    Cheers muchly.

    Quote Originally Posted by Advice Trinity by Knoxville
    "The second you aren't paying attention to the tool you're using, it will take your fingers from you. It does not know sympathy." |
    "If you don't gaffer it, it will gaffer you" | "Belt and braces"

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    Re: Collaborative Document sharing

    For something non microsoft, but of the same guise there is huddle

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    Re: Collaborative Document sharing

    Dublin Core could be interesting reading on a related matter.

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    Re: Collaborative Document sharing

    Quote Originally Posted by tiggerai View Post
    Have you tried GoogleDocs?

    I've used it realtime with a friend of mine to write documents at the same time... I believe it saves versioned changes too.
    Please note: I'm not interested in real-time collaboration, this is just a tiny, and not the most important aspect of the equation. Sometimes I think this even is a distraction.

    I guess what I tried to say is I really like wiki pages more than a whole bunch of files on drives. It's just so much easier to think about. Look at internet - I perceive it as a web of content, not a bunch of files on servers. Somehow I can organize information better in a wiki than files in folders.

    But have you seen a really USABLE wiki with powerful and rich formatting capabilities, not some cryptic wiki language, or crippled HTML editor (that can't be used even for some simple tables)? And which can be used offline as well? I guess what I really want:
    * A system that's easy to use, not one which I'm constantly fighting to get things done
    * A system that helps me organize the information well. And which makes the information discoverable to others.
    * Easily share and collaborate with others, but not necessarily in real-time (in our busy world it is a luxury to assume that the other person will have the time RIGHT NOW to work together on the document. But that would be nice!)
    * A system which allows me to work anywhere, whether it's in the office, at home or on the plane.
    * Oh, and I can EASILY see who did what, the whole history of changes, and easily revert back to a previous version.

    Am I the only one with such demands? Am I asking too much?
    Last edited by 2web3; 21-11-2009 at 09:07 AM.

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    Re: Collaborative Document sharing

    As I said, use git.
    Quote Originally Posted by Agent View Post
    ...every time Creative bring out a new card range their advertising makes it sound like they have discovered a way to insert a thousand Chuck Norris super dwarfs in your ears...

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    Re: Collaborative Document sharing

    Quote Originally Posted by aidanjt View Post
    As I said, use git.
    Well, tell this to a "business" user, such as a salesman, or a marketing person. They run in horror when they see a command line.

    How do you guys manage this problem? Can you share your best practices?

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    Re: Collaborative Document sharing

    There are GUI front-ends, such as giggle, KGit, and gitSafe

    There's a big list of frontends and interfaces here
    Quote Originally Posted by Agent View Post
    ...every time Creative bring out a new card range their advertising makes it sound like they have discovered a way to insert a thousand Chuck Norris super dwarfs in your ears...

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    Re: Collaborative Document sharing

    This is exactly what google wave does,
    if only they would open it out to everyone - its useless until its available to everyone....

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDu2A3WzQpo

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    Re: Collaborative Document sharing

    It's still useless if you require strict formatting. Google Wave would be useful as an internal communication mechanism, but not for professional document presentation. It doesn't work offline either, at this point.
    Quote Originally Posted by Agent View Post
    ...every time Creative bring out a new card range their advertising makes it sound like they have discovered a way to insert a thousand Chuck Norris super dwarfs in your ears...

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    Re: Collaborative Document sharing

    Quote Originally Posted by mikerr View Post
    This is exactly what google wave does,
    if only they would open it out to everyone - its useless until its available to everyone....

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDu2A3WzQpo
    I'm not so sure Wave would full fill the 'with powerful and rich formatting capabilities' requirement, it's a fairly basic editor.
    I don't mean to sound cold, or cruel, or vicious, but I am so that's the way it comes out.

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