Changes

Adobe Acrobat 8 has a new powerful feature for distributed authoring called "shared review".  In a shared review, the lead author creates a draft of the document using Acrobat 8. He then posts a copy in a read-only area on a web site and sends around an email message to the other others that contains a link to the original.  When the recipients of the email open the draft document in Adobe Reader 8 (only the free reader is required to do this!) it opens with instructions on how to edit their changes into the document.  It also provides two sharing buttons, one to share one's own changes with fellow authors and the other to update one's copy with changes entered by others.  All of this happens live, so that changes shared by one author can be concurrently imported by all other authors at the moment they are shared or any time thereafter.   

Adobe Acrobat 8 has a new powerful feature for distributed authoring called "shared review".  In a shared review, the lead author creates a draft of the document using Acrobat 8. He then posts a copy in a read-only area on a web site and sends around an email message to the other others that contains a link to the original.  When the recipients of the email open the draft document in Adobe Reader 8 (only the free reader is required to do this!) it opens with instructions on how to edit their changes into the document.  It also provides two sharing buttons, one to share one's own changes with fellow authors and the other to update one's copy with changes entered by others.  All of this happens live, so that changes shared by one author can be concurrently imported by all other authors at the moment they are shared or any time thereafter.   

The network communication is handled transparently by Adobe Reader using the webdav protocol.  Obviously, the original author has to set that up.  He does that by entering the url of a webdav area that will hold the updates.  This is different from the draft document itself and need not even be on the same web server, although obviously it can be.

The network communication is handled transparently by Adobe Reader using the webdav protocol.  Obviously, the original author has to set that up.  He does that by entering the url of a webdav area that will hold the updates.  This is different from the draft document itself and need not even be on the same web server, although obviously it can be.