
Collaborating with LaTeX and git - shrikant
https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2012/10/16/collaborating-with-latex-and-git.html
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mjn
While the article discusses using --word-diff to _view_ changes by-word rather
than by-line, which fixes the problem of paragraph reflows cluttering up the
diff display, the bigger problem I've had is that it's not entirely obvious
how to _patch_ in that manner. As a result, if two patches touch the same
paragraph, they usually conflict. You could avoid that by using the classic
researcher approach to collaboration: taking locks on sections. But if you're
going to do that, SVN is actually better, because you can break out the
sections into separate files, and use SVN locking to do the edit-token
bookkeeping, rather than having to pass around a "Mark is currently editing
Section 2, pls don't touch" lock through email or in LaTeX comments.

Here's a StackExchange thread discussing possible solutions for finer-grained
patching: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5587626/git-merging-
withi...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5587626/git-merging-within-a-
line)

~~~
JoachimSchipper
Isn't the usual solution to institute a one-sentence-per-line policy? The big
win is, indeed, that this allows easy patching/merging/...

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morpher
If you have collaborators that aren't fluent in latex, it can be useful to
generate an output file (e.g., pdf) that contains marked changes.

I really like latexdiff[1] and a script[2] for making it easier to use with
git. The generated pdfs have new text underlined with blue wavy lines and
removed text struck through with red lines.

It doesn't properly show bibliography changes when using bibtex, but that's
understandable.

[1] <http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/support/latexdiff/> [2]
<http://eothred.wordpress.com/2010/11/07/latexdiff-and-git/>

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fudged71
There are some useful entries on stackexchange for using git with LaTeX. Also
useful if you run into any problems:
[http://tex.stackexchange.com/search?q=git&submit=search](http://tex.stackexchange.com/search?q=git&submit=search)

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forkrulassail
This link is just one of the reasons I keep jonesin for HN.

Thanks for posting, I'm in the middle of developing a course for academics
about LaTeX, git and collaboration. Perfect hit.

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jpallen
As the author of this article I'm glad to hear you like it :). If you have a
spare moment I'd love to chat to you about LaTeX and collaboration in
academia, and what your experiences with git are in this context. The blog is
hosted at ShareLaTeX, which is an online LaTeX editor we're developing to try
to provide a simple solution to some of the problems that git has a bit too
steep of a learning curve for.

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gsf
This reminded me of <http://www.scribtex.com/>, where each LaTeX project is
kept in a Git repo.

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jpallen
I wrote this article, and I also founded and run ScribTeX so that's no
coincidence! I'm now working with Henry on ShareLaTeX, where this blog is
hosted, and we're about half way along with our plans to get git integrated
there as well.

