Sorry this question might seem a bit premature but I'm in a hurry… I was trying to do Version control of a latex project with dropbox. In my imagination Dropbox provides functions like showing which specific textlines have been changed or automatically merging files. Unfortunately I can't find any of those functions. Is recovering old files really everything Dropbox can provide? Which program do I need for accomplishing what I want?
[Tex/LaTex] Is Dropbox an effective tool for version control of latex documents
collaboration
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Get them to print the document and mark on it, then fax it to you. (If they have a fast scanner, they could scan and email, instead of faxing.)
Then, collect all of the marked-up documents and make the first-author decisions as to what to change. (Yes, there will be conflicts in the suggestions.)
Alternatively, turn on line numbering and get them to send you plain-text emails with comments tied to lines.
These methods work. Twiddling with PDF comments may be of use in text-only material, but scientific work normally is awash in symbols and diagrams, and suggesting changes to these is very hard in text-only form.
If your supervisor does absolutely insist on Word as Editor there is little you can do. However, if it is more the "Word-like user experience" (as opposed to "LaTeX source code user experience"), LyX might be a considerable compromise for the both of you!
LyX is a "WYSIWYW" (What You See is What You Want) text processing system that uses LaTeX as back-end. LyX has a user interface that is close enough to "normal applications" so that "normal users" are able to use it effectively. You can also insert LaTeX commands directly for quick math editing or when a certain feature is not available in LyX.
Regarding interoperability with LaTeX: LyX uses LaTeX as back end, so you can always get from LyX -> LaTeX. However, the internal document format is different. For the LaTeX -> LyX route the converter scripts work pretty well with the standard classes, but may require some manual overwork if you use many own macros or "fancy stuff". So LyX should not be considered as a generic round-trip LaTeX Editor like TeXShop or vim. However, all this works a lot better than any LaTeX -> RTF/OO/DOC/HTML -> LaTeX route.
The main point, which in my experience is the "killer feature" that makes supervisors prefer Word, is that LyX has a built-in change tracking system. I used it quite a bit when sending my thesis to people for proof-reading and it was a pleasure for them to do edits and for me to integrate (or reject) their suggestions.
It's also possible to have mark-ups for the changes in the PDF output:
A subtle side point is that, by using LyX, your supervisor or other coworker immediately gets the LaTeX typesetting experience. For me, this has been a pretty successful path towards the long-term conversion of TeX-illiterate coworkers to LaTeX.
Best Answer
Disclaimer This was meant to be a comment, but it is too long...
No, Dropbox does not provide (AFAIK) the diff feature. It stores old versions of the files, and allows you to restore any of them (with a time limit for free accounts), but it cannot show you the differences between versions.
If you do have experience with distributed control version systems such as git or mercurial I propose the following setup:
hg statusorgit statusto see what the other person changed. You can also use graphical diff tools to see the individual linesgit --authorto specify the other person name when commiting changes made by the other. I don't know the equivalent option for mercurial)