: Re: What's the best version control system for a book writer? I'm a writer—no programming, only prose in text files, mostly in Emacs org-mode, some in markdown-mode. I want to implement a version

@Carla500

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I have recently started writing with LaTeX in a version controlled git directory.

I use latexdiff to track changes between commits. This has the advantage of using an algorithm to track changes in a paragraph independent of line breaks, where for example only a single word changes, whereas git-diff would show the entire line/paragraph as having changed. I also use the LaTeX package gitinfo to embed git metadata into working documents. The hook requires manual configuration, but once you're up and running, it's nice to quickly verify the commit corresponding to the PDF you sent to someone for review, for example.

So, in total, the workflow consists of:

Git version control
LaTeX document preparation system

latexdiff package
gitinfo package

And I love it! It does everything I want it to do and the output is beautiful.

In the course of preparing a manuscript for submission to an academic journal, it may undergo all sorts of rearrangements, edits, expansions and contractions depending on the requirements of the journal. LaTeX is ideal for dealing with these sorts or rearrangements, especially when splitting the document into subdocuments by section (abstract.tex, results.tex, etc.). I tend to create a new branch for each journal submission. A document based on "my-dissertation-chapter" might have a new branch called "science" in which we reformat our article for Science magazine. After it was rejected, we created a new branch called "nature" to submit it to Nature instead, complete with the appropriate changes to the bibliography style, etc. This way, no informations gets lost. You can always go back to a commit/snapshot to recover whatever you might need. That beautiful paragraph you wrote but then deleted for space can be added back again when you resubmit to another journal with a more relaxed word count, etc.

The only issue is the learning curve for LaTeX and git to make all the parts work in concert. I'm not a developer. I don't even use vim. I prefer to use the TeXShop IDE provided in the MacTeX distribution of LaTeX to write and prepare my documents.

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