Bibledit allows several users to work on one Bible at the same time.
Collaboration can happen through the network, or a USB stick.
Under the hood, Bibledit uses Git for collaboration. Git is a content manager. The user does not notice that Git is used, neither does he operate it. Bibledit does it all for him. The person that sets up the collaboration, though, will have to use a few Git commands once. Once everything is set up, it all goes automatic.
Bibledit stores all data locally, but when collaboration is enabled, it connects to a central repository. The repository will be on the network, or on the USB stick. The data is shared through that repository.
Whether collaboration is done through the network or the USB stick, in both cases the local repository needs to be created. If you'd like to create the local repository, you can follow these steps.
- Start Bibledit and leave it running till you have set everything up.
- Consider the project that you'd like to collaborate on. In this example we take a project Ndebele.
- Open a terminal, and change to the data directory of the Ndebele project:
cd
cd .bibledit/projects/Ndebele/data
- Initialize the local repository:
git init
It will respond saying that a Git repository was initialized.
- Add all the files to the repository:
git add *
- Commit the data into the repository:
git commit -a -m init
This should finish the job. Just to check whether all went well, you can issue the status command:
git status
If it says that it is on branch master, and that there is nothing to commit, that means that all is well.
If several users work together on one project using the network, then if somebody makes a change in the text of the Bible, within a short time that change will be propagated to the other users. They will see that change on their screens too.
First of all somebody knowledgeable with computers and networks needs to set up the collaboration.
After that it will go all smoothly.
If several users work together on one project using a USB stick, then the changes need to be physically carried from one user's computer to the one of the other user. If a stick is inserted into a computer, and everything has been set up properly, then the data is moved to and from the USB stick automatically. Normally one user will work on the data for a while, then insert the USB stick and have the stick be updated automatically. Then the stick will be carried to the other user. He will insert the stick too, and then his data will be updated using the data on the stick, and he will also on his turn update the data on the stick. So the stick can then be moved to the first user, and so on. By keeping on moving the stick between the computers, all data will be updated, and all changes will get propagated to all users. All the users will see the changes on their screens.
To start off with this, somebody knowledgeable with computers needs to set up the collaboration.
After that all will goo smoothly.
Now we come to the purpose of everything, which is working together on one project.
This collaboration is very simple: Just work on your data as you did before.
Bibledit cares for everything, and everything will be updated and shared automatically.
On rare occasions you might notice that the chapter you are working on changes. This happens if somebody else works on the same chapter as you, and made some changes in it.
Suppose that two or more people collaborate on one project. One of them is a bad typist. He makes many errors. The bad typist has the potential the harm or destroy the project's data. If he makes serious mistakes in his own data, then the collaboration mechanism will propage his mistakes to the other members of the team. This is not a desirable situation.
Bibledit has a solution for this situation. You can use two mechanisms of Bibledit simultanously.
1. Collaboration through the network or the USB stick.
2. Merging changes.
This is how to do it:
1. The experienced person has project "master" that has the master copy of the Bible. Collaboration of the master project is switched off so that no changes can enter that project by mistake.
2. The experienced person has project "messy" that initially is a copy of the master project. Collaboration is switched on.
3. The unexperienced typist has project "messy" too, with collaboration switched on.
4. The unexperienced typist makes changes in project "messy", and through collaboration these changes go into project "messy" of the experienced typist too. This all goes automatic.
5. Once in a while the experienced person goes to the Merge tool. He opens project "master" and project "messy", reviews the changes as proposed in project "messy", makes any edits he likes, takes out any mistakes he does not like, and then finally merges the changes from "messy" into "master". This is done chapter by chapter. Once the merge is done, project "master" and "messy" are identical again in that particular chapter.
6. Any changes entered or not entered propagate to the unexperienced typist again through the collaboration. If the unexperienced typist made a big mess in a certain chapter, through the collaboration this mess is cleared up again on his computer.
For worldwide collaboration, a server can be set up on the internet, and used by all parties. Instead of entering git://192.168.0.6/repository or git://localhost/repository as the repository, for example, it will be something like git://repo.mydomain.org/repository.
The collaboration system can conveniently be used for automatic backup. The system that uses the USB stick for collaboration works well for that. The USB stick can be carried around.
Collaboration of two projects on the same computer is possible if those projects have the same ancestor, that is, one is created by importing all the Biblebooks exported of the other one. This can be helpful for demo purposes and to test and learn to use this tool if only one computer is available.
Sending and receiving the data of your Bible will happen automatically at intervals. Bibledit will receive any changes from the repository, and then send its own changes to that repository. To manually send and receive your Bible, use menu File / Send / receive.
Using collaboration with merging data has advantages in the following situation: Think of the situation that a bad typist is out in the bush, and comes to town with his stick, and has little time for the master person to merge while he waits. So just plugging in he stick, a quick automatic merge, and away he goes again. Then if the master person has some time in the days or weeks following, he can then carefully go through the messy project, and merge it with the master project, taking his time for it, and doing an accurate job.