[Latingp] Versioning conflict of resource documents/Transfer of Google Docs ownership

Meikal Mumin meikal.mumin at uni-koeln.de
Thu Feb 2 14:03:12 UTC 2017


Dear Mirjana,
Dear colleagues,

I was working through our recent LatinGP emails, since I managed to
dedicate a bit more time. I saw that you had recreated - from scratch -
some files, I had worked on earlier and which I had originally shared with
the group too.

This has led to a situation where we now have doubled resource documents,
and my original edits as suggestion for changes became ended up in a fork,
which was not the one shared with the group in your most recent emails.

I would suggest that we reunite the different forks, and continue working
on the documents I had edited and worked on earlier. Particularly the
file/google docs document "Latin part of MSR2 with attestations v5
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tu_WfZ2OAYmzUMmU3Ys9pxPafd_YQ35XBCNUpYVyles/edit>"
is a fork based on original work by Chris, which I had worked on quite a
bit in 2016 since the last edits by Chris, and Scott Emblen-Jarrett had
also made some edits, however I had also merged this document with the
document currently entitled "01-LanguagesAZ-EGIDS-3-4
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IVZvFVSjkxo4cj-r79j1CzMWLkalj7-19qBA5X0jEyM/edit>",
which I had added as a separate sheet entitled "Language Data
<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FX5XEuqU2g5-pVr6rWLRhE3KiE4JxT8Kd70I6jlMSBU/edit#gid=282968357>",
to allow for cross-referencing within the same document. Originally, I had
shared my Google Docs import with the group in an email dated June 08,
2016, and I have quoted the text below:

Dear colleagues,
> since Chris has left us I thought it was a good moment to try and transfer
> our work into a form which is better suited for collaboration. I for one
> was having problems with the Word files, which were very slow and kept
> crashing for me, plus keeping the versions apart was confusing to me.
> Accordingly, when I found some time to continue the review of the list
> codepoints I had promised earlier, I took the time to convert it into a
> Google Docs Spreadsheets documents, which is like an Excel file but
> stored in the cloud and it can be edited in the browser. All changes are
> tracked and saved automatically, so ideally we can stop worrying about
> version control.
> I am still in the progress of walking through the list of codepoints.
> However I'm sharing it with you now so we can continue collaborating on it
> while I go on with my own review. We can always export the work from their
> back to an Excel or any other spreadsheet file (including all earlier
> versions under automatic version control) should the need arise. It offers
> nearly all other features of Excel, including features such as comments and
> highlights we all know from Word.
> You can access the document from any browser using this link:
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FX5XEuqU2g5-pVr6rWLR
> hE3KiE4JxT8Kd70I6jlMSBU/edit?usp=sharing
> If you have any Google Account it would be good to access the document
> while you are logged in, so we could all understand who made comments and
> changes, however it is not necessary for access. Please let me know if you
> have any Google (Apps) account so I could invited you directly to edit
> and take ownership of the document (currently it is associated with my own
> Google account) so it will become accessible to all LGP members and so we
> could share the administration of our repository of documents also in the
> future.
> Similarly and again for the sake of simplicity of collaboration, I plan to
> transfer the draft for the actual proposal from Word into a Google Docs Text
> document.
> I hope this will prove helpful and enable us to collaborate easier and
> make some progress, even during our transitioning period from one chair to
> another (set of) chairs.
> I'll look forward to any comments either on the conversion process or the
> documents themselves.
> Best wishes,
> Meikal


The link to the file is still the same. I believe that my version of the
list of MSR-2 codepoints relevant to Latin in the shared document
entitled "Roman/Latin
Script LGR Draft
<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FX5XEuqU2g5-pVr6rWLRhE3KiE4JxT8Kd70I6jlMSBU/edit#gid=1672559530>"
is more advanced than the re-import in the document entitled "Latin part of
MSR2 with attestations v5
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tu_WfZ2OAYmzUMmU3Ys9pxPafd_YQ35XBCNUpYVyles/edit>"
and re-shared again recently by you, however I would suggest we double
check, since I don't know which changes you had made in the Word-file form
since the last edits by Chris, and you might have re-imported your version
on the basis of that Word file.

In the case of the document "01-LanguagesAZ-EGIDS-3-4
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IVZvFVSjkxo4cj-r79j1CzMWLkalj7-19qBA5X0jEyM/edit>",
I had made structural changes and formatting changes mostly in the hope of
making it more understandable, however I believe that your recent version
features a different list of language (yours is restricted to EGIDS 3-4 and
has 86 entries - the one in my revision and based on the work by Chris
included EGIDS 5 too occasionally and has 73 entries), so we have to
exhibit care to reunite those two forks.

Lastly, I had changed the color coding and start documenting them in a
third sheet called "Standards & Abbreviations
<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FX5XEuqU2g5-pVr6rWLRhE3KiE4JxT8Kd70I6jlMSBU/edit#gid=890803396>"
 - I assume the later could be unified with your document entitled "
HowToProcLetInLang
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/11f-WaDQuBAj9O9JqHQp-s6t-cWcJjjhHuj3OZ0yhFjA/edit?ts=588f8e57#>
".

I would suggest we reunite the different versions and forks, and in order
to prevent future version conflicts and end up working on the same
resources, I would also suggest to transfer the ownership of the document
to you Mirjana, as you have taken over the the chair of LatinGP since.

Due to technical restrictions of Google Docs, I cannot transfer the
ownership of the document to you Mirjana myself, but from what I gather, it
is possible to make a copy of the document to your own account, and then
share it by yourself as a new version. The process is described here
<http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/67371/transferring-files-across-from-restricted-google-drive-account>
and I would suggest we follow those steps so that you could re-share those
files again. Let me know if you need help with that - we could also resolve
that off-list e.g. in a chat or skype call.

I really think we need to clean up this versioning and the different forks
and keep the ownership centralized, so we don't loose work. Once we have
done that, it should make things easier for everybody and relief us from
the burden of version control. Whatever road we follow, I believe we will
need shared resources, which we can all edit and which we need to put under
some form of version control. Putting stuff in actual version control
systems such as Git makes it difficult because we are working with binary
files, rich formatting, tabular data, and Unicode code points. In ArabGP,
for example, we ended up sharing word and excel file using a shared Dropbox,
but even there someone needed to manually do the version control and we
ended up constantly copying and renaming the documents, e.g. ammending REV-
Meikal or REV-Sarmad, or V0.2 to the filename, which worked somehow, but
which became cumbersome at some point and someone had to take
responsibility in any case. I personally think the Google Docs solution is
helpful, and we should continue that way, but if the group is not unified
in that regard, we should have that discussion, settle the matter, and
stick to any procedure we agree upon. I for one keep loosing track of
emails and email attachments. In this regard, I believe it might be useful
for us to also have a shared repository where we can put accompanying files
- if we stick with the Google Docs solution we could also create a shared
Google Drive folder, which contains relevant resources we need for our work
- I personally think such a solution is better than a wiki or a website,
but that could be a matter of a further discussion we need to have.

Sorry for the verbose email, but I'm trying to prevent a loss of work. I
hope this is helpful and clear.

Best,

Meikal
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