Working (and breathing) in an academic job requires a lot of writing. Typically writing formal texts, like articles, proposals, cover letters, applications and similar. I use LaTEX for almost everything written work I do – at least if it is of a “formal” kind.

LaTEX is essentially motivated by the idea that the writer should only concentrate on the text, and not the layout of it. I.e. you write in a sort of lightweight code. Headers and similar are marked-up using commands. I like it a lot – probably due to my software developer interests – as it is sort of coding.

Anyway. I’m currently re-writing my project outline which is going to be my research plan the next 4 years. Rewriting has always been demotivating for me. The text which is cut or rephrased never comes to use – which I see as a bit sad. Therefore I was eager to find a system which could motivate me to rewrite – and as well make the rephrased sections gain the possibility to a new life.

So – what systems does such things? Well – version control does that. For instance Subversion (SVN). I installed VisualSVN set up a repository (i.e. the folder where everything is stored – but not the copy you edit) and added a project (for the actual files). Then set up Tortoise SVN client and checked out the project.

After copying all files to the project folder – and then committed it to the repository – I was on my way.

My idea is to “tag” the project when a section is (re/)written. This means to essentially copy all files to a different section of the repository and add a comment to it. Then, when I have written for instane “Introduction” a few times – I can reuse it for the next time! Or at least I have a starting point. Any way it is great for backup and “regretting” a bad writing day.

What are your thoughts on this? Is it a good idea? Will it work?