General ⇒ Collaboration with Colleagues who don't use LaTeX

[rawlins02]

I'm a professor at a research university. I have used LaTeX for more than 15 years to write journal papers and grant proposals. I'm now finding it increasingly difficult to use LaTeX in collaborations when others involved do not use LaTeX.

For example, I am working on a grant proposal, I am the principal investigator (i.e. doing most of the writing...), and my two co-investigators use Word. In the past I have dropped the LaTeX source code into a Word document and instructed other to simply edit text. Prior to submission I then handle references and figures. Given my considerable experience with LaTeX and its referencing and figure capabilities, switching to Word to accommodate others may end up costing me a lot of time. One way forward is to use Word for proposals and LaTeX for journal papers, provided of course that I have limited involvement from others.

As one might imagine, I'd then be using LaTeX a fraction of the time. Unsustainable long term IMO. There must be others that are encountering similar challenges.

Interestingly, of the six investigators on a proposal I submitted a few months back, four are regular LaTeX users. Good thing, since several ended up sending me numerous equations that I would have never been able to implement in Word equation tool.

Suggestions or thoughts?

MR

[rawlins02]

I still suspect that LaTex users collaborate with colleagues. But, as I suggested above, very unsure how this is accomplished.

[Johannes_B]

One suggestion from my side. Instead of W0rd, use simple and plain text files text.txt. Every user is going to know the file ending and how to open it and nobody is scared of something "unknown".

Marking a section title can be done by writing something like section (who would have guessed?) in front or after the title.
Equations can be typed like using a computer calculator or something like Matlab not using more than the visible keyboard.

Using W0rd as an intermediate stage is not a good idea, as far as I can say.


Just a small suggestion from my side.

[moon61]

Hi rawlins02,

Feeling less lonely .... I'm exactly in the same position! LaTeX for all research matters and MS-Word or proposals until few years ago when I gave-up and turned back to LaTeX for all my business.

As a first attempt I used plain text files and requested from all my partners to use simple editors (eg: notpad)
Believe it or not: it failed most of the time because today almost everyone is using MS-Word including amongst academics and even don't know how to open a txt file.

After having run a survey I just ended up using Google Doc (now called Google drive) and segmented my proposals into sections & subsections in the main tex file.

Now at the other end I requested from all the partners to provide their inputs directly on the drive in the dedicated section.

From my end I dump all the drive content and run a check as many environments doesn't export properly. I know it's pain but much less than editing an equation or asking a drawing to go to the right place with the right size etc...

This is the only solution I'm using it minimizes my wasted time, it's not perfect but it works good enough.

You may have a look at this project:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Coll ... _Documents
unless done already.

All the best
moon

[rawlins02]

Thanks for the replies. Sounds like both of your options involve collaborations whereby each writer is contributing to specific sections of the paper or proposal. Incorporating text in this way is not difficult. But once I place everything into a .tex file and produce a PDF a few days out from due date, what then? Anyone interested in making changes through the entire document would have to edit text while working around all of the control characters, figure calls, and equation calls. Most express anoyment in that case and state a preference for WORD. Not clear how Google docs eases things. I've looked at the collaborrative writing Wiki page briefly and still see no obvious easy solution. Looks like those solutions are targeted more for version control. I will look closer at that Wiki page when I get a chance.

[JohnHammersley]

Have you considered using an online LaTeX editor such as writeLaTeX? (https://www.writelatex.com)

I'm one of the developers, and we've found that the real time preview really helps new users get to grips with it more quickly, and in the first instance they could leave any complicated inputs (e.g. equations) to you.

Once they've seen one or two examples they'll start to pick up the syntax, and they'll be LaTeX users in no time!

Hope this helps, best regards,
John

[rawlins02]

John,
I did not know of this tool. Looks interesting. I will examine closer this weekend or after the current proposal is submitted in a couple weeks. Thanks.

[JohnHammersley]

No problem -- let me know if you have any questions (john @ writelatex . com), happy to help.

Best,
John

[jdiogenes86]

Just wanted to leave another resource here for people that might find this now and which I think might be helpful, Authorea https://www.authorea.com/product.

Authorea is a collaborative editor for researchers that allows researchers to write in a fully WYSIWYG environment, like Google Docs or Word with the ability to write in LaTeX in snippets or vice versa. You can export directly to Word or a LaTeX zip.

I like to say that whether you are Donald Knuth himself or you think LaTeX is a rubber, you can use Authorea.

Hope that helps!

[Stefan Kottwitz]

That's the third advertisement post for Authorea. Not completely off-topic, but I'm not really happy about posting only advertisements. Having the same information copied to different topics in our forum looks redundant to me, so I or one of our moderators may clean it up.

Stefan