On Mon, 29 Jan 2007, Stefano Franchi wrote:
On 28 Jan, 2007, at 6:21 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
Of course, if it were 1200 pages and different chapters were authored by
different people (like Samba Unleashed), you probably couldn't do it as a
single file.
Well, I can tell you from very recent experience that even a relatively
short 250 pages book cannot be managed when three authors work on it
concurrently. It has been hard enough with separate files. I look back
in horror at the hours spent with diff and emacs on single chapters. I
can only shudder at the thought of passing the whole file back and
forth!
My experience is actually that it is easier for several authors to work on
document that is split up in several files. I also recommend using a
version control system instead of passing the files back and forth.
With a VCS, the process is more like:
Author A checks out his working copy and starts working on chapter 1, i.e.
one of the files.
Author B checks out his working copy and starts working on chapter 2, i.e.
another file.
Author C checks out hsi working coyp and starts working on chapter 3, i.e.
a third file.
Once an author feels it is time for someone else to look at what he has
done, he commits his changes and the other author does an update. In case
they have edited the same file, they will be able to detect this.
It's not perfect, but it's certainly workable.
cheers
/Christian
--
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44 http://www.md.kth.se/~chr
