Fidus Writer: Open Source Collaborative Editor For Non-Geek Academics

johanneswilm writes "While writing my Ph.D in anthropology I found out it's almost impossible to get non-geeks to help me with editing my thesis because it was written in Latex. Lyx is almost there, but as it's not web based, it's difficult to use for online collaboration. Writelatex.com is online, but typing LaTeX code is a no-go for non-geeks. Google Docs is web based and near-WYSIWYG, but lacks support for professional print formats such as Latex. The Ph.D took longer than expected, so before finishing me and three others were able to code an entirely new editor: Fidus Writer: web based, open source (AGPL), almost-WYSIWYG and with tools for academics such as citation management and formula support and output formats PDF, Epub, Latex, HTML."

Write in a Word Processor, Format in Latex

[Colonel Korn]

Why not just create your content in something that all of your non-geek friends are happy to use (Word with track changes, for instance) and then spend a short time formatting it when you're done writing?

Re:LaTeX, really?

[johanneswilm]

Yes, my contribution is this very program. The reformatting is a LOT of work. If people use MsWord, Libreoffice or alike, it cannot be done automatically.

Re:Um... for a Ph.D.?

[smoothnorman]

In the late 90s (yeah might as well be 12,000 years ago) i did my PhD in Latex; but, two of my Profs *insisted* on editing bits (in retrospect, mostly adding pointless elaboration) with MSWord. (one committee member didn't even understand how any document wasn't the same as a "word file"). So, i learned to use rtf2latex (and similar tools for bibliography and index), back and forth; email RTF, convert it back, (if the addition was over a three sentences). It wasn't bad at all when one learned maintain all tables and figures as merely included files. It was all worth it when the thesis committees, who check tedium like margins to within a millimeter and equation formatting, passed my thesis right off; while my grad-school mates that used MSWord all had their format go wrong when the "approved font" was applied.

Requires Facebook, Twitter or Google account...

[knarf]

I gave it a try, installed the source, followed the instructions, opened the page in a browser and... was greeted by an error message telling me it needed a 'Facebook app' or some other social drivel.

Facebook? Are they serious? I opened a bug report:

I thought to give Fidus a try by installing the source and following the directions. When I tried to log in to my freshly minted server it told me I couldn't because I had not configured a 'Facebook app'. Looking through the Django config page I noticed it only gives the options of using Facebook, Twitter and Google. Neither of these are acceptable in any environment which has even the slightest respect for an author's privacy and confidentiality.

Please make it possible to use Fidus using either a 'private' 'social' 'app' (lots of quotes there, for different reasons) or by foregoing on the social fad entirely. Since Fidus seems to be about getting work done I don't see the need for more 'social' distraction anyway.

Re:Um... for a Ph.D.?

[gwolf]

A book I published almost two years ago underwent a similar, painful process. I (as the coordinator) had it all typeset in LaTeX. It was not perfect, but it was beautiful already. The university (social science research institute) sent it (the PDF I gave them, as per their request) to the style corrector. I got back... An ugly MS Word document with some corrections included in it (but not version-controlled or anything like that, not even MS Word's sorry replacement for a real version correction). Merging that back into the original was way beyond painful.
The second round of style correction was, fortunately, done different. I was able to work through the process with our editor, fixing some details out of common aggreement (and not only accepting their changes as during the first round, where I even spotted places where the style corrector misunderstood and even reversed the meaning of some fo the sentences). The second revision was not a piece of cake, but it made me learn quite a bit about editorial reasons and aesthetics, and had me way happier at the end. And the editor even learnt a bit about LaTeX as well.