| I do not particularly agree with the some of the arguments made in this thread for and against the status quo, but some of your statements are factually incorrect. >For example, I can't edit a legal document while SSH'd into a host computer on my firms network. Track changes is supported by LibreOffice and its kin, so certainly possible to ssh into a computer on your firms network and edit it. Might require an X server on your local machine, I am not sure if libreoffice works in terminal (but its open source, so if you really wanted to you could add support!)
That said, the recommended way to do what you are asking is to run an "Online Office Server", which gives you a online version of word (think google docs, but looks like MS word) that you can access through you VPN or company portal with ssl/tls. Different workflow for different folks I suppose. >Also, Track Changes doesn't allow two people to work on a document asynchronously, while git does. Office 2019 has added 'source control like' simultaneous/asynchronous editing when integrated with a Sharepoint server. Multiple people can have the file open, and the save button both commits your changes and pulls whatever other changes have been committed since, with options to resolve conflicts. Furthermore, with the office 365 version of the office suite (or Online Office Server, which is nearly the same thing but self hosted) it is possible do live editing, whereby multiple people edit the same document simultaneously (google docs style). Not sure why you would want to do that, but it eliminates merge conflicts at least and seems to be pretty popular at my workplace. Especially useful when someone is presenting slides and there is something you don't like in them ;-) Of course, as long as your document is on a sharepoint server, you get version control built in and can roll back to see the document at any save point, do diffs, etc. It is true that the FOSS world is more civilized, but Microsoft isn't sitting by idly. They spent $8B on github for a reason, and it wasn't to get their business model. |
Having to use MS Word in the cloud doesn't really scratch the itch I'm talking about either.
That's cool about Office 2019, I did indeed not know about that. Can I perform these Sharepoint-enabled changes while offline? It seems like all of the things you are talking about require a centralized online server in order to do. Regardless, I do not think there is a conflict between the statements "you need Sharepoint to do these things" and "Track Changes cannot do these things".