Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2018 11:15:22 +0000 From: Frank Leonhardt <frank2@fjl.co.uk> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Document/collaboration server advise needed Message-ID: <911032ae827918fd9beeff0bbab46223@roundcube.fjl.org.uk> In-Reply-To: <da157768-7566-994f-c377-66d6c3f961bc@kicp.uchicago.edu> References: <da157768-7566-994f-c377-66d6c3f961bc@kicp.uchicago.edu>
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On 2018-01-22 20:52, Valeri Galtsev wrote: > Dear All, > > Three groups of scientists need to write documents collaboratively. > They are going to use MS PowerPoint, Word, also store PDF files. They > want to be able to add external people from other groups they > collaborate with and give them access to some areas or "projects". In > other words, they want some collaborative work environment, mostly to > work on documents. > > In the past scientists were using TeX, and one of version control > systems (CVS, subversion,...). And all was great, as TeX files (pretty > much like programs software developers write) are ASCII text files, > and diff of two version is rather small... > > Unlike the past scientists I work for plan to use MS PowerPoint, Word, > also store PDF files. All these are effectively binary files for > version control systems, then versions will not be stored as a small > diff, but each version ends up being the whole document. > > One obvious solution may be: just buy office365.com service, or set up > MS server on our own machine. And these are the two things I am trying > to avoid. > > Could someone recommend open source software? Some collaborative suite > focused mostly on working on documents, with web based interface. > > I run owncloud server for my Department, and one in general can use > that, but I hope to find something more focused towards collaborative > work. I can give you a pretty good list of systems to AVOID at all costs (mostly based on Microsoft standards). I can't actually think of one that wasn't painful to use. For collaborative documentation I've been impressed by the commercial Confluence - a very easy-to-use wiki with add-ons. But nothing to do with RCS on external document files. My current fave-rave for "this sort of thing" is Redmine, the base and a few modules for which are available in ports. It's written in Ruby but don't hold that against it. It's actually easy to set up and works very well. It's got a lot of features you don't need (like critical path analysis and ticket workflow) but you can turn on/off features by project to declutter. And it integrates with pretty much any VCS. Redmine doesn't have all the features you desire, but I don't think anything does. Regards, Frank.
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