Software Review:
Editing 2.0 - Collaboration for Editors
by Arroxane Ullman, LSC 2nd Vice President
In this era of cutbacks, understaffing, virtual meetings, and remote coworkers, editors often rely on tools like wikis, Zoho, and Google Docs to replace in-person collaboration. TextFlow by Nordic River Software AB, available for download at www.textflow.com, is one of the latest free collaboration tools for editing.
TextFlow lets writers and editors work how and when they want. Like Microsoft Word’s Track Changes and Compare and Merge Documents features, you begin with an original document to which each editor makes changes. However, unlike Word, you can compare multiple versions at the same time by dragging and dropping the original and all edited versions of the document into TextFlow where you can view each editor's changes in different colors. Choose the changes you want to keep and export into a final document. Simple!
As with any new product, drawbacks exist, such as:
- It is still in beta, which means there are likely to be a few hiccups. Yet the TextFlow developers are working hard to make it work, so will listen and politely respond to your input.
- It requires you to download software. In some work environments you may not be able to load the software on your system. Yet, unlike other tools, there is no uploading of documents to an external site.