> On Thursday 17 November 2011 12:56:56 pm Calvin Morrison wrote: >> On 17 November 2011 12:47, Darrell Anderson <humanreadable@...> >> wrote: >> > > Excuse me if I jump in the discussion just to put my 2 >> > > cents about the editor. >> > > What about the good old LyX? >> > > >> > > http://www.lyx.org/ >> > > >> > > It's easy to use, it outputs LaTeX, it's multi-platform and >> > > it's Free >> > > Software. >> > >> > Lyx is a front-end wrapper to LaTeX. Basically then we're back to >> > discussing markup. :) Lyx could be an option for some documentation >> > teams, but the internal team still needs to learn LaTex. Doable if >> those >> > involved have the time for that kind of thing. :) >> > >> > Much of our recent discussion has been how to encourage non team >> members >> > to contribute where nothing more than everyday word processor skills >> are >> > expected. >> > >> > For internal purposes the leading focus is using a format that is >> > maintainable in GIT for merging collaborative changes in a team >> > environment. Hence the arguments in favor of markup, which is text >> based. >> > I think we have agreed to ODT, which fundamentally is XML, which is >> text >> > based. >> > >> > ODT allows writers to use any software supporting that format and does >> > not limit contributors to a specific tool chain. >> > >> > Darrell >> >> Actually I am almost certain only LibreOffice and the now dead >> OpenOffice >> can import and work in fodt. Odt support is pretty standard >> >> Can someone shed light on this? > > I can't speak toward FODT since I don't use it. I think we should just use > plain ODT. > > If we use FODT, most distros will include OpenOffice/LibreOffice by > default. > It includes a familiar interface closely resembling most other office apps > (except MS Office 2007+, but older version still resemble OOo/LO). > > OOo and LO both have Windows/Mac version, some Win/Mac users use it. Not > all > people will want to install it, hence my argument in favor of plain ODT, > which is supported by MS Office 2007 and (it now seems) most other office > apps. > The biggest issue here is that ODT files are compressed binary blobs, and therefore work rather terribly in version control systems. Maybe it would work better to automatically create a "HEAD" ODT file from the FODT in the GIT repository that anyone can download/edit, and when it comes time to merge their changes we can open the .odt and export as .fodt prior to commit. Tim