git is one thing I've really wanted to introduce to my wife, who is an author, but she's so tied to Word and there's just nothing I've found that ties the two technologies together well (I have tried a couple options, but they were disappointing)
Nonetheless, Google Docs is a much better tool for most ordinary users than Git. With Google Apps Script you can easily use Google Docs as a CMS (content management system).
If indeed your wife actually needs to use Git, instead of teaching your wife markdown, make a bunch of customized headings and explain to her she must not use all of the formatting options in Google Docs.
Techies often tend to try to convert ordinary people to "techie technology." It is usually a mistake.
It's not nearly as good at merging complicated histories as git, and doesn't help you keep commits atomic when working with multiple files. But that's seldom much of an issue with human language texts.
Google Docs' suggestion feature is probably better than reviewing pull-requests for normal people. Its ability to let multiple people edit the document at the same time can be really great (but would be crazy to do when editing source code).
On Linux, you could turn on autosave, then tie it in with a short script for inotify + auto checkin + update.
Very messy I guess, would probably be easier to write a patch for libreoffice, tied into undo/redo edit history.
Seems like a killer feature for some people. Infinite rollback.
Would work best in an optional separate window, so you could copy historic text back in.
Imagine a full file upload every change.
Instead, having a git style history for edits, right in OOo would be awesome. Maybe a ${filename}.hist file for each file.
You could exclude this from git/svn/dropbox whatever backups too, so only purposeful saves get sent upstream.
The GUI interface, its nuances would be key here.
Imagine being able to open the history window, scroll to, or search text of all changes, then click and be taken to the location in current document, with a placement option once there.
That's next gen history, and gp is right, why isn't this a thing?
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/file-history-in-...
MacOS also does the same via Time Machine.
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mh15136/mac
Other options are Google Docs (the editor has version history support) and cloud storage services that support versioning (Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc).
I recommend to be wary of changing someone else's workflow, however. Particularly if it is someone you live with. Unless the other wants to change their workflow, they won't accept it. And if something goes awry, you're the first person they call, and make responsible to resolve the issue NOW. For example, when stuff breaks a day before a deadline, you know what you'll be spending that day on :-)
EDIT: Markdown on the other hand is far too simple to format formal writing. It was never the intention of Markdown to be that.
Here are some Markdown documents I've written and/or typeset using ConTeXt:
* https://impacts.to/downloads/lowres/impacts.pdf
* https://www.docdroid.net/VQU9VEZ/design-pdf
* https://www.docdroid.net/rHlVyPV/autonoma-pdf
* https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2020/04/28/typesetting-markdow...
My Typesetting Markdown series[0] does a deep dive into how to keep content and presentation separate, which is much easier using ConTeXt than LaTeX, IMO. Part 8 of the series delves into typesetting annotations. As for TeX Live, I agree. The instructions for installing ConTeXt on Windows is basically: download, unzip, run two batch files.[1]
That said, ConTeXt looks great for my purposes! So much more is done out-of-the-box, the documentation is well-laid out, and I can see looking at its main pages how I could set up formatting for a style guide myself, unlike LaTeX. Thank you.
Absolutely. I developed KeenWrite[0], a free and open source desktop editor, to replace those shell scripts with a graphical user interface and command-line interface[1]. There are several starter themes you can use, as well.[2]
[0]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite
[1]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite/blob/master/docs/cmd...
I'm seeing you'd submitted an eight-part series, "Typesetting Markdown", first part here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20003913
That got no traction on HN, but I'd love to see that included as a 2nd-chance pool or submitted feature.