[scrumper]

If it has real, proper, version control with named checkpoints then I'll check it out. I still struggle to believe that Google Docs doesn't have the ability to create a named version alongside its version-for-every-change tracking.

[toomuchtodo]

So lets bolt a fancy document editor on top of Github and call it a day.

[gknoy]

Someone mentioned a project like this on HN several weeks ago. Someone other than me will get good karma for linking to it. (:

More importantly, it seemed like something that the Github team is very interested in as well. In the past, such as when they introduced showing maps and other data on Github, they have expressed interest in making Github a more universally useful tool.

[scrumper]

That'll be a fancy MS Word-compatible editor with integrated diffing. The problem with using Git(hub) is that line delta change model - perfect for code - doesn't make much sense in the context of freeform English. I care about changes to words, sentences, and paragraphs. I need to see changes in-line, most of the time.

Draft (draft.io) has the right model, but I need a native app with local storage and, again, MS Word compatibility.

[rposborne]

Honestly... This could be a very useful product. We just rarely need "branching"

[zefi]

We're Kivo (YC S13) building Git for documents. www.kivo.com - would love to chat more.

[scrumper]

This is extremely interesting and directly solves a major pain point for me. I've registered and I am going to give this a try once your Mac beta is out.

Curious why PPT first? I'd have thought a bigger issue was with Word docs. I guess that has its own track changes thing, but it's still not got anything approaching version control.

[gknoy]

I imagine that one of their main target use cases is collaboratively editing slide decks, or something similar. I recall when our company had some major event last year, our exec team had over a hundred iterations of their slide deck.

edit: Their blog [1] notes that the reason is to let them focus on executing one well-defined thing WELL. Seems like a good idea.

  If we’re going to achieve these goals, we need to be 
  super focused. Which is why our first version is 
  specific in its scope: Kivo 1.0 is an Office plugin 
  which works with PowerPoint on Windows.

Kivo guys: what a great presentation, and clear explanation of what you feel is lacking in the space.

1: http://kivo.com/blog/

[scrumper]

I figured there was a narrow focus at this point: it makes perfect sense. I was just wondering why that particular focus. Having thought on it some more, it looks like a clever strategy: the Word case has a half-solution already, with Track Changes and numbered file versions. In Powerpoint, there's simply no such thing.

I wish the Kivo team every success.