[HN Gopher] GitHub for English Teachers
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       GitHub for English Teachers
        
       Author : MaysonL
       Score  : 66 points
       Date   : 2022-08-28 11:10 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.jonudell.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.jonudell.net)
        
       | ryzvonusef wrote:
       | I apologize for offtopic-ness, but I have no idea what Mr. Jon
       | Udell did to piss our censors off; apparently his website is
       | banned in my country:
       | 
       | https://i.imgur.com/1m9LX0C.png
       | 
       | I swear it's so crazy the absolute random shit that gets banned
       | here. Thank god for Tor, I guess, I was able to access the
       | forbidden knowledge of...github?? brb about to create some social
       | unrest.
       | 
       | ----
       | 
       | Having read the article, I was curious how it could be utilized
       | for everyday writing, tracking collaborations and stuff.
       | 
       | Maybe if you are doing editorial work, this could lead to
       | controlling your workflow in a more cohesive way than docs? You
       | have your text, I have my text, I don't lose my workflow behind
       | your red tags.
        
         | HKH2 wrote:
         | His domain name has 'nude' in it.
        
           | lultimouomo wrote:
           | A classic Scunthorpe.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
        
           | judell wrote:
           | Seriously? That's the reason? Crazy!
        
         | judell wrote:
         | > Maybe if you are doing editorial work, this could lead to
         | controlling your workflow in a more cohesive way than docs?
         | 
         | I could see that happening. For the example I showed, though,
         | as well as what you're envisioning, you'd really want to use
         | the GitHub API to skin the experience.
         | 
         | And then, of course, you could do the same with GDoc.
         | 
         | Ultimately I don't care how it's done, I'm just looking for
         | ways to make it easy for someone to teach others how to write
         | and edit by presenting an orderly and easily navigable sequence
         | of edits and associated narration.
        
         | DiggyJohnson wrote:
         | Well you gotta tell us what country you're in so we get some
         | context.
        
           | ryzvonusef wrote:
           | Oh sorry, Pakistan.
        
           | samarthr1 wrote:
           | Three image linked lists country as Pakistan
        
           | TulliusCicero wrote:
           | It says right there in the picture.
        
       | throw0101a wrote:
       | Meta: I haven't thought about Jon since the days of BYTE
       | Magazine:
       | 
       | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Udell
       | 
       | > _I started at BYTE in 1988. During the pre-Web years, I wrote
       | reviews and features for the magazine. In 1995 I switched into
       | Web mode, created BYTE.com, and documented my progress in print
       | and online._
       | 
       | * https://www.jonudell.net
        
       | MontyCarloHall wrote:
       | The author's use of Git versus Google Docs' version history
       | (which I find is excellent for tracking and annotating
       | collaborative changes across a document) hinges on his claim that
       | GDocs history is too complicated. He does not substantiate this
       | claim; indeed, his use of Git seems extremely convoluted and
       | complicated relative to GDocs.
        
         | vxNsr wrote:
         | I can say that when you're trying to compare versions gdocs and
         | word are a little more difficult to use compared to how GitHub
         | (or git) presents the diff.
        
           | MontyCarloHall wrote:
           | How so? GDocs' diff presentation looks great to me: https://i
           | mages.ctfassets.net/lzny33ho1g45/2t3YHSACJY4iGfxWYL...
           | 
           | In fact, it does one better than GitHub by showing edits by
           | different users in different colors.
        
             | judell wrote:
             | Per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32630551, this is
             | a about a very specific scenario which GitHub happens to
             | handle out-of-the-box (but awkwardly), and which GDoc
             | doesn't (but perhaps could with scripting).
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | vxNsr wrote:
       | This is interesting but I'm curious, how much use would something
       | like this get?
       | 
       | Forget a paid product or any sort of licensing requirements:
       | 
       | If someone were to create a DocHub that treated docx files like
       | txt files and had a plugin for word/OpenOffice used a really nice
       | interface on top of git and came up with a way to intelligently
       | represent styling changes (which git doesn't because it only
       | deals in txt.)
       | 
       | Would this sorta tool get enough use to justify maintenance? This
       | feels like a niche within a niche.
        
         | MontyCarloHall wrote:
         | If this service were easily self-hosted (i.e. on an intranet),
         | it would serve the niche of people who for whatever reason
         | cannot or will not use Google Docs, whose collaborative editing
         | and version control experience is state-of-the-art, and
         | unlikely to be surpassed by a competitor.
         | 
         | This could be a small but very stable niche--many companies
         | that deal with sensitive data cannot use cloud services, often
         | by law.
        
           | CTmystery wrote:
           | I have a hard time with the Google docs is the "collaborative
           | editing and versioning" state of the art bit. My team has
           | several long running docs that we maintain in it, and the UX
           | for finding relevant comments around a blurb of text is bad.
           | You can either (a) never resolve comments so that they always
           | appear in the sidebar, cluttering the doc to no end or (b)
           | tap the comment icon in the top right and scroll through
           | resolved comments that have lost all relationship to the text
           | body. I think there must be better solutions, but vendor
           | lock-in means we'll probably never leave it (at least, not
           | without major disruption).
        
             | judell wrote:
             | My question is: "state of the art" for which purpose? For
             | general collaboration I think GDoc is very good.
             | 
             | I'm going for a very specific purpose: enabling a teacher
             | to walk a student through a sequence of narrated edits. The
             | GitHub-based method I showed has proven to work in
             | practice, but GitHub is a high bar for many. While GDoc
             | doesn't solve the problem out of the box, I can definitely
             | imagine a scripted solution that would, and I'd like to see
             | that happen.
        
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       (page generated 2022-08-28 23:01 UTC)