Best practice to peer-review a LaTeX document?

Question

I'm currently writing a big document in LaTeX. The language is English and since I'm not a native English speaker, I've found a friend who will review and correct the document for me as soon as I have finished it.

Now I'm thinking about how this can be done. I don't want him to change the original version of my documents, since maybe I don't want to include all the modifications. So how can I best compare two different versions of LaTeX documents to see what he has changed?

This seems like a duplicate of What is a good strategy for obtaining comments on a LaTeX document from non-LaTeX using collaborators? — Seamus, Feb 04 '11 at 12:58
Using a revision control system like subversion or git could be helpful, too. This way prior versions don't get lost and you don't need to email the document back and forth, including all the images and files that go with it. If you want to keep it low tech, consider using dropbox.com. latexdiff could still be used to highlight changes. — Christian Lindig, Feb 04 '11 at 14:47
@Seamus: I don't think it is a duplicate, since if I understand Roflcoptr correctly, his/her friend knows LaTeX. — Caramdir, Feb 04 '11 at 17:13

score 12 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

12

The preferred way is latexdiff. You'll need to have Perl installed, as this is really a script.

The usage is quite simple (see below), but check the documentation for more options.

latexdiff old.tex new.tex > diff.tex

On an unrelated note, I had a question some time ago about comparing PDF documents, but hopefully you won't need that.

You might also find this discussion helpful, which is partly related to what you're asking.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

Community

1

answered Feb 04 '11 at 12:54

Martin Tapankov

17,900

+1, I used latexdiff very successful in the review process of my last papers. I always sent my co-authors a full updated and a diff version of the PDF. They printed it out and gave me there nodes back. – Martin Scharrer Feb 04 '11 at 14:37
Thanks. I tested it and the problem is I always get the error 'The Perl interpreter could not be found' although I installed perl. – RoflcoptrException Apr 04 '11 at 21:52
@Roflcoptr: Check whether your Perl interpreter is in your path. You're probably using Windows (in Linux getting this error would be pretty hard if you use normal installation mechanisms), so check Control Panel->System->Advanced->Environmental Variables and see whether the path to your perl interpreter executable is included in the PATH variable. – Martin Tapankov Apr 05 '11 at 07:08
Yes it is. I checked this already yesterday. Or btw... was is the executable? The bin folder? – RoflcoptrException Apr 05 '11 at 07:10
@Roflcoptr: The executable is in the bin folder (perl.exe), so your path will contain something like "C:\Perl\bin", or wherever you installed it. Try running it from the command line directly (write "perl" and see what happens). BTW you might want to drop in chat to continue troubleshooting there. – Martin Tapankov Apr 05 '11 at 07:13
Google windows add to path or some such in order to find help on how to update your PATH environmental variable. – Michael Palmer Jan 11 '12 at 22:22

Best practice to peer-review a LaTeX document?

1 Answers1