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I'm currently working on a document which gets updated frequently (lecture notes) and would like to implement a 'Check for Updates' button like Crossref does. That way students don't need to manually check, say, Dropbox and compare files but can instead simply click on a link in the document which takes them to a website that tells them whether the current version is accurate and, if not, lets them download the most up-to-date version.

I assume there's no out-of-the-box solution for this? I was thinking of putting the document version in the hyperlink using php get and then writing a very simple script which compares that version to the latest. I take it that's the easiest solution?

If you have any thoughts or suggestions, I'd be very grateful!

Dr. Manuel Kuehner
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sdlkgjh45
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    Not sure if I understand your question correctly: Can't you simply add the date (2021-07-12) to the PDF file name? – Dr. Manuel Kuehner Jul 13 '21 at 02:46
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    Your second paragraph basically describes what the Crossmark button does. See https://www.crossref.org/documentation/crossmark/participating-in-crossmark/#00328 In PDFs the button is supposed to be a web link with the datestamp of the PDF included as a query string. For your personal use, I doubt you need to have a php script. You can probably get away with a static page with some javascript. – Willie Wong Jul 13 '21 at 03:27

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Use some sort of cloud-based document storage like Google Drive. Share the doc with students (with "view only" permission) and all updates to the document are immediately visible to everyone. Don't even bother having them download it.

Assuming the students are downloading a tex file and rebuilding the PDF document from scratch themselves for some reason, well that's more complicated than most students can handle in the first place. If you were doing that use GitHub, students could pull from a repo and merge changes into their tex file (again, all of this more complicated than most normal students could handle).

More information here would be helpful, is it a slide style document? PDF? Word?

Paul Atreides
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  • Thanks for your suggestions. I know that some students prefer to download the document to do mark ups on their devices, so ideally I'd like to have a check for updates button on the first page of the document. (It's a PDF document.) – sdlkgjh45 Oct 16 '20 at 01:19