[OS X TeX] Collaborating on LaTeX documents

[David B. Thompson, Ph.D., P.E., D.WRE, CFM]

I'd like to poll the collective on how we work out the details of  
collaborating on writing projects shared among a variety of authors.

My research team used Word for awhile, but after fighting with the  
differences in formatting that invariably result, and fighting with  
frontmatter and backmatter, we eventually gave up and resorted to  
using LaTeX. Three of the team members are LaTeX literate, if not  
experts. The fourth and the odd pick-up researcher that joins the core  
team occasionally we just carry by cut-and-paste or whatever is  
necessary.

I've been tempted to set up a subversion repository to hold our draft  
reports, with the authors able to check-out and check-in edits and  
upload graphics for including in the documents. I haven't done this  
yet, in part because I lack an appropriate place to host the  
repository, and in part because I'm still a bit intimidated by  
subversion. (Problem is surmountable with a little time and effort.)

What are y'all doing when working as a team? Are you just passing the  
source about? Is one person operating as a manual repository? Are  
there tools out there I'm not aware of?

Thanks for all the interesting content. I'm looking forward to the  
interaction. Have a happy weekend!

-=d

David Thompson, Ph.D., P.E., D.WRE, CFM
Civil Engineer/Hydrologist
http://drdbthompson.net
http://drdbthompson.net/DavidThompson.vcf.zip