Re: How do we collaborate on our documents?

[Tony Graham <tgraham@mulberrytech.com>]

At 8 Aug 2000 10:10 -0700, Eduardo Gutentag wrote:
 > "G. Ken Holman" wrote:
 > > At 00/08/07 15:14 -0400, David_Marston@lotus.com wrote:
...
 > > >Unless I
 > > >hear of a specific protocol, I'll just send my draft documents to the
 > > >mailing list.
 > > 
 > > I look forward to specific suggestions of what we can use.  I'm sure other
 > > OASIS committees would be very interested to see how we solve this issue.
 > 
 > I'm not sure how to write this without sounding like a party-pooper, but I
 > believe that no solution would be acceptable that is not usable on a variety
 > of platforms, such as Windows/NT, MacOS and Linux/Unix. Is there such a
 > beast? I honestly don't know. But the alternative would be to engage in
 > what in a social context would be lableled "discriminatory practices", which,
 > by the very nature of the OASIS process and membership, we cannot.

Many open source projects make use of CVS (Concurrent Version System,
or similar), which is a revision control system that allows concurrent
updates to a source code file (unlike, say, RCS or SCCS that lock all
other users from modifying a file while one user is modifying it).

A CVS server runs on a Unix box (and, I believe, a server running on
Windows NT is being developed).  Users can access the repository over
the network, and many CVS servers are set up so you can browse the
repository using a web browser.

CVS clients are available for Unix, Windows, and MacOS, plus there is
a Java-based CVS client.

In projects such as FOP and, I expect, the other Apache efforts,
anyone can browse the code or download it onto their machine, but only
certain people have the access rights to "commit" changes to the
repository.  Anyone else who wants to make a change has to send their
patch to the appropriate mailing list or to an authorised committer.

Since source code is just text files and our work product is going to
be mostly text files, using CVS could work for us.

I don't know whether OASIS has considered running a CVS server, but if
they did it for committees like ours, they could also make it
available to those XML-Devers who think think that the XML-Dev mailing
list should also be the umbrella organisation for open-source
projects.

Regards,


Tony Graham
======================================================================
Tony Graham                            mailto:tgraham@mulberrytech.com
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street                    Direct Phone: 301/315-9632
Suite 207                                          Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD  20850                                 Fax: 301/315-8285
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML
======================================================================