Open-source Software System for Multi-author Documents
L. Emery · 2011
An efficient means was developed to manage multiauthor documents using software components not usually run together that are both freely available and free of cost: Concurrent Version Software (CVS), L AT E X typesetting software, and the Unix “make” utility. Together they solve the main problem with multi-author documents: losing track of the “latest” version, tracking author contributions, and a strict enforcement of document format. APS has used this system for two large documents with about a dozen authors each: a 2007 white paper (150 pages) on a ERL proposal and a chapter (230 pages) of the APS Upgrade CDR. We stress the use of L ATEX because the plain-text format is amenable to version comparisons, the macro-based system allows last-minute global format changes, and finally L ATEX just looks better than Microsoft Word. Several contributions from APS to this conference actually use this system.