> Can Drupal do anything like O3Spaces (http://o3spaces.org/Home) can? I
> think that would provide much better document management for developing ODT
> documents.
I found this product--Alfresco (http://www.alfresco.com/). It's open source
and seems like it could provide for excellent document collaboration.
There are many such products. Each has some feature that catches our eye.
But such window-shopping won't be conclusive (especially when this is a group-decision).
It would be best to identify what the authors need, and then let Michael prove that it is already available in Drupal.
And that can be derived by looking at other products, such as O3spaces and Alfresco.
Jeff, can you state any specific feature/behavior in these products?
Then let Michael offer the same features (or equivalent) in Drupal.
Let Michael have the "first right to refuse", given that the Drupal site already has the Steering Committee's nod.
We should look for other solutions only if Drupal cannot meet the authors' critical needs.
(Drupal can still be used for everything except AUTHORING. For example, for HOSTING the final docs.)
Coming to the authors' wish-list, let me start off the "seed" list. Please add your own list here.
The tool(s) selected at the end should meet the following as bare minimum:
1. Allow easy collaboration (joint editing)
2. Allow online/offline modes of working
3. Provide synchronization/collation of work done by multiple authors.
4. Allow creation of pdf for offline reading (clicking on links takes you to target)
5. Allow creation of pdf for printing a book (target of links are made visible so reader can flip to that page)
6. Allow collaborative editing (show diff w.r.t any previous version, allow rollback, allow merging).
7. Allow conversion of odt files into existing content.
8. Allow conversion of WIP website content into odt, so that an author can do offline editing.
9. Allow authoring of context-sensitive help file (the file we see when we press F1)
Let Michael have a fair shot at it and then let us decide.
-Narayan