big-list
I sometimes need to get edits to my papers from non-LaTeX users. Do you have any clever methods of collaborating with them (or even other LaTeX users) in a productive way?
By this I mean sharing edits. So I have a document I've written in LaTeX, and they want to edit it, correct spelling and grammar, suggest additions, and so on.
So, I'm just wondering what the best solution for handwriting -> LaTeX is so far, if any.
There is none, and if there’ll ever be one it’s probably years, if not decades off. I know people who are currently working on recognizing just the layout of a document, i.e. recognizing that a paper represents a letter, etc.
That works fairly well, but it’s still research level, and going from recognizing the layout to replicating the layout using LaTeX is a big, non-obvious step. And we’re not even talking about text recognition itself.
Just text recognition (i.e. ignoring any layout issue) works fairly well today but only for plain text, not with any formatting.
That said, there’s JMathNotes which recognizes basic formulas and produces LaTeX output. It’s a nice and quite powerful proof of concept.
But it’s important to realize that even though many of the individual building blocks exist, piecing together a working solution is hard.
I think that Steve Hicks controller for a Mars Rover programmed in TeX is a good candidate: ICFP Contest 2008 - Mars rover in TeX.
Best Answer
Having been asked to provide comments on quite a few documents to which I would not have access to the original, I have adopted the following method:
Request the file in pdf form; it must have either clear page numbers or line numbers (or both).
Reading through the pdf file on screen, open a text file and enter comments in the form
p.n, col.n, para.n, l.n -- "text being commented on", <comment>
If a commented item spans more than one page, column, line, then "pp.", "cols.", "ll." is specified. An extensive text can be specified as "XX ... YY", as long as the extent of the text is unambiguous.
Return the comment file by email.
The result has never been questioned, except when I've inadvertently misidentified something. The method has been used for comments on The TeXbook, articles for publication (not for TUGboat, where I do have access to the source), and several books whose sources have been in (La)TeX, Word, or gosh knows what else. It's maybe more verbose than other methods, but it has the virtue of not being able to foul up the original, which is always appreciated.