How to do document review in LaTeX?

Question

I have a LaTeX document that I wrote, that needs to be reviewed by my boss. What do I send him? The .tex? The generated .pdf?

How will he make his comments?

In the case of the .tex, should I suggest him something like the todonotes package? Or just tell him to edit away, and I'll diff to see his changes? In the case of the .pdf, is it possible to add notes to a pdf?

He is largely competent enough to know how to compile LaTeX and everything, but I'd like to spare him the time and trouble if I could.

I'd like to approach as best as I can to the document review mechanisms in Word, which, I think, are quite good (and to me the only point to use Word at all...)

How would you do? Thanks.

Answer 1

The problem with sending someone LaTeX source is that unless they're a LaTeX user themselves they are unlikely to have the necessary software installed. I would recommend sending a PDF, which anyone can typically read on any platform.

It is possible to make annotations to PDF documents. I believe most PDF readers support this out of the box. I'm certain, for example, that Preview on Mac OS X does.

When you get back the PDF with annotations, you can go back and edit the LaTeX sources accordingly. What I think you lose vs. Word is the ability to easily highlight the changes between multiple document revisions. This is not a big deal if you're doing one round with one reviewer, but it doesn't scale so well if this is a major editing project with many rounds of feedback and revisions.

Answer 2

PDFs are easier to read, as you don't have to mentally parse all the syntactic overhead. Check which PDF readers support annotations on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_notetaking_software

Then, as you make all the changes, use standard VCS tools to track all the different versions of your .tex files. A git repo and a good diff viewer is all you need. This workflow scales much better than sending MS Word files all around your office.