LaTeX + Git vs Google Docs

People who want to work with others on an RPG naturally tend towards Google docs. It seems so easy. They send the link out, people make edit suggestions, and you click ‘approve’ or ‘deny’. Everyone’s generating spells, and spelling corrections at 100 kph, and it all looks great.

Git, meanwhile, looks like a technocratic chore, posing a massive barrier to entry for a great many contributors who just wanted to view the file and maybe add in their two cents.

However, problems will become apparent soon.

Once the document reaches 100 pages, Google docs no longer load properly. Flipping between sections makes the browser stutter.

Next, contributors find they can’t make any suggestions which consist of more than 1 line. Someone changing a spell will also have to change the example-text for that spell later on. Someone altering racial bonuses will have to account for that later in the document. People don’t really want to suggest line-changes - they want to suggest ideas, which may consist of any number of lines being changed. However, Google Docs will only accept or reject changes to a block of text, not whole ideas.

Contributors also want to explain why a change is necessary, if it’s not completely obvious. Their only recourse is that ‘add comment’ button, which then needs to place a comment on an already messy document, and the small box which pops up gives people the strong impression that they should not write too much.

Once the Google doc feels ready, it’s time to export it to a more reasonable tool to do the actual formatting. At this point, the document is sealed - no more changes will be accepted without returning to the Google doc, exporting it, and preparing the whole thing again. Google Docs cannot create properly typeset documents.

And, of course, Google Docs allows none of the joys of automation .