Collaboration. Problems in collaboration. The solution

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Irma Reeves
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1 Collaboration László Kálmán 1 Csaba Oravecz 1 Péter Szigetvári 2 1 ELTE/MTA Theoretical Linguistics Programme; Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences One of the reasons for working with computers, networks, etc. is that it helps creating together with others. 2 Department of English Linguistics Eötvös Loránd University Lecture 10. / Dec 8, 2010 Problems in collaboration Problems in collaboration Elements of the solution The solution people send documents to each other through functionally the same documents are called differently by each person even one person may decide to call them differently from one time to the other different persons may split the document differently, so one and the same document may be split into different parts by different people proposed modifications are hard to follow (even if you use a program that records changes, e.g., a word processor) different people want to make different modifications, but it is hard to know who wanted to modify which version nobody knows which is the latest version The solution: version control (= revision control) no need to send documents around unique name of every document for everyone modifications can be traced (all modifications leave traces) there is always only one current version

2 Basic concepts Concepts of version control Basic operations Basic operations Repository a database where all versions of all documents are stored (actually, only the differences between each version and the previous one) (the users need not know how all that happens) Server machine where the repository is stored; program that serves the users requests Local copies each user can have their own copy of any part of the repository (local copies can be easily compared or synchronized with the repository) Adding (in a working copy): adding a file to the repository (initial check-in) Removing/deleting (in a working copy): removing a file from the repository (why should you do that?) Checking out: asking for a local copy (downloading) Committing: synchronize repository with your working copy (committing your changes) (you are usually requested to add a log message) Updating: synchronize local copy with repository (do this always before starting to work!) Basic operations concepts (cont d) Two philosophies Two philosophies Log (history): you can always retrieve and look at earlier log messages Version (revision): a particular stage of a document Diff[erence]: production and visualisation of differences between revisions Release: a snapshot of a repository at a given moment (note that releases can branch at releases; mainly software developers use that) With locking when you check something out, you are safe: nobody else can change the file until you check it back (commit) people tend to keep permissions for too long Without locking several people can work on the same file at the same time conflicts may arise if a conflict cannot be solved by merging, that s bad sign about work organization very popular solution: workflow (pre-defined order of proposing, approving/editing, publishing etc. of documents)

3 Archaic: RCS (Revision Control System, c. 1980, CLI) CVS (Concurrent Versions System) and Subversion most widespread, GUI also Visual Source Safe and Team Foundation Server: Microsoft, $$$

4 Web2.0? = Bubble2.0 Content management "second generation of web-based communities and hosted services [...] to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing between users." rich Internet application techniques, enhanced functionality Web-based applications and desktops software applications run entirely through a browser (Flash, Silverlight, Java) folksonomies (folk + taxonomy; collaborative tagging) Semantic Web (Web3.0; web pages contain machine-readable metadata that describes their content) syndication, aggregation and notification of data (in RSS or Atom feeds) Life cycle of digital content 1 create 2 update 3 publish 4 translate 5 archive Roles and responsibilities author editor reviewer/publisher administrator consumer Content Management Systems Some systems to manage the content of a Web site to use interactively by a potentially large number of contributors to facilitate the organization, control, and publication of a large body of documents and other content, such as images and multimedia resources web content management system is a CMS with additional features to publish web content to web sites Automated templates WYSIWYG editing Scalable feature sets (plugins, modules) Workflow management Document management Blogs transition between web page, forum and content management Wikis public web page editing/publication (offers simplified language for creating HTML documents) Daisy, Dokuwiki, Drupal, Joomla!, MediaWiki, Plone etc. many different (free) systems for content management

Some systems Blogs transition between web page,

Dokuwiki, Drupal, Joomla!, MediaWiki, Plone etc.

5 Some systems Blogs transition between web page, forum and content management Wikis public web page editing/publication (offers simplified language for creating HTML documents) Daisy, Dokuwiki, Drupal, Joomla!, MediaWiki, Plone etc. many different (free) systems for content management

Google Docs free, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet,

documents online while collaborating in real-time with other users

the same time imports and exports from/to several popular formats

7 Google Docs free, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and form application allows to create and edit documents online while collaborating in real-time with other users documents can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users at the same time imports and exports from/to several popular formats (OpenOffice, HTML, PDF, RTF, Text, Word) automatic saves storage and document size limits

Software Tools Subversion

Software Tools Subversion Part II Lecture 4 1 Today s Outline Subversion (SVN) TortoiseSVN Client SVN Tips 2 Subversion (SVN) 3 Subversion (SVN) Centralized open-source VCS; started in 2000 Developed as