Dnia Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 11:39:11PM +0200, Mari Voipio napisał(a):
John Devereux wrote:
But I would really appreciate any insights anyone may have.
I've got some experience on this. I'm sure my way is not optimal, but at least it is an experience.
And a very interesting one, Mari! I'd like to also add *my* five cents. I've recently started (with a friend) to manage a, let's say, medium-sized TeX project. It is typesetting a journal for a scientific society. (We haven't actually typeset a single issue, but the first one is coming...) On of the first things we did was to decide on a very strict policy of naming files. We also put them in different directories (one directory per paper and one big for an issue), and name them accordingly (the point with naming files is *extremely* important - if scores of people send you files, renaming them according to a strict set of rules is a must!). Another is to use a version control system; we went for Mercurial, since (a) I have another friend, who is a strong advocate of python & mercurial, so in case of trouble we have some support; (b) the only other VCS I know is RCS, and this is prehistory (and it copes only with single files, not directories!); (c) Mercurial's default (and indeed only) way of working is to commit changes etc. to a local copy of the repository and only then possibly communicating with a net repository now and then; this comes rather handy if half the team does not have internet acces at home (which is a deliberate decision of my friend, not an infrastructural problem in Poland;)). Believe me, with any larger project a reasonable VCS is also a must. As for the contributors (be them authors, translators or anything: if they are not geeks, do not expect them to read any set of rules, user's guide or anything longer than 1-2 pages (optimally 0.5-1 page). Regards PS. I was very sorry to read about Poles... I apologize for your Polish cooperants for using Word. Keep in mind that here in Poland we have a very strong TeX team (LM, Gyre!), but it is still not the majority of the society;)... -- Marcin Borkowski (http://mbork.pl) 888 * ostre słowa * ostra muzyka * ostra płyta