Author: Alessandro

Senior information technology manager

No, email is not a collaborative editing solution—A comparison of the state-of-the-art

11 May 2016

If you have co-authored at least one document in your life, you have probably experienced the pain of merging changes manually, especially when these changes are sent as email attachments.

Email is not collaborative editing — Source The Oatmeal

Nowadays there are multiple collaborative editing solutions that enable merging changes automatically. Unfortunately, many professionals are not aware of the capabilities offered by these solutions and keep sending changes as email attachments and merging them manually. Believe it or not, these professionals include software engineers and computer science researchers.

I think we can do better than that…

In this post, I aim to clarify the confusion around collaborative editing solutions by comparing the state-of-the-art:

Google Docs + Drive
Microsoft Word + OneDrive/SharePoint
Overleaf

The comparison is based on several criteria:

On-line co-authoring: the ability to edit on-line while seeing others’ changes in real-time
Off-line co-authoring: the ability to edit off-line and merge changes automatically when back on-line
Version control
WYSIWYG editor
LaTeX editor
Formatting capabilities
Support for OOXML format (DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, etc.): unfortunately, this proprietary format from Microsoft is still the most used document format
Support for OpenDocument format (ODT, ODP, ODS, etc.): this ISO standard format is used by many public institutions
Terms of service

Google Docs + Drive

Google Docs + Drive is probably the most used collaborative editing solution. It was released in 2006.

Pros

On-line co-authoring in the browser
Version tracking
WYSIWYG editor

Cons

Off-line co-authoring in Chrome only
Minimal formatting capabilities
Read-only support for OOXML format
Read-only support for OpenDocument format
Google Terms of Service

Unfortunately, the contras of Google Docs + Drive outnumber the pros.

The read-only support for OOXML and OpenDocument formats is particularly annoying. When you first edit a file in OOXML or OpenDocument format, Google Docs automatically creates a copy of the file converted into Google Drive format (GDOC, GSLIDES, GSHEET, etc.) without notifying you. For instance, this means that when you first edit a DOCX file, you will not edit this file as you would expect, but its GDOC copy, and you will end up having two copies of the same document in Google Drive. This may confuse you and your co-authors since you will be unsure about which copy of the document is the latest one. Moreover, this may compromise the formatting since format conversions are not always lossless.

Besides, the Google Terms of Service are particularly alarming. I am not a legal expert, so take my judgement of the terms of services with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, the Google Terms of Service (see the excerpt below) are most likely not suitable for co-authoring confidential documents.

“When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.”

Microsoft Word + OneDrive/SharePoint

Microsoft Word + OneDrive/Share Point is Microsoft’s answer to Google Docs + Drive. It was released together with Office 2013.

Pros

On-line co-authoring in the browser with Word online
On-line and off-line co-authoring with Word 2016 for Windows
Off-line co-authoring with Word 2013 for Windows, Word 2016 for Mac and Word for Windows Phone, Android, and iOS
Version tracking
WYSIWYG editor
Sufficient formatting capabilities
Support for OOXML format

Cons

No native support for OpenDocument format
Microsoft Services Agreement?

Microsoft Word + OneDrive/Share Point is superior to Google Docs + Drive by any criteria. I could not find any paragraph in the Microsoft Services Agreement that looks as scary as the one from the Google Terms of Service. Nevertheless, I am not willing to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, so I keep this agreement with a question mark in the list of contras until a legal expert proves me that it is suitable for co-authoring confidential documents.

Overleaf

Overleaf is the ultimate collaborative editing solution for LaTeX enthusiasts. It was released in 2013 (then called WriteLaTeX).

Pros

On-line co-authoring in the browser
Off-line co-authoring with Git
Version labelling
LaTeX editor
Maximal formatting capabilities

Cons

Steep learning curve for non-academics
No support for OOXML format
No support for OpenDocument format
Overleaf Terms of Service?

Similar to the Microsoft Services Agreement, I could not find any paragraph in the Overleaf Terms of Service that looks as scary as the one from the Google Terms of Service. Nevertheless, I keep these terms with a question mark in the list of contras until a legal expert proves me that they are suitable for co-authoring confidential documents.

Summary

The following table summarises the features offered by each of the compared collaborative editing solutions.

	On-line	Off-line	Versioning	WYSIWYG	LaTeX	Formatting	OOXML	Open Document	Terms
Google	✓	✗	✓	✓	✗	✗	✗	✗	✗
Microsoft	✓	✓	✓	✓	✗	✓	✓	✗	?
Overleaf	✓	✓	✓	✗	✓	✓	✗	✗	?

Is there a clear winner? I do not think so.

If you are a perfectionist in formatting and prefer working with LaTeX, Overleaf is the solution for you. If you are not too concerned with the formatting and prefer working with WYSIWYG editors, I recommend you to choose Microsoft Word + OneDrive/SharePoint.

I belong to the first category, and I co-author scientific papers using Overleaf only. However, I have to admit that Microsoft has done an excellent job with its collaborative editing solution, and I do not mind co-authoring other documents such as project deliverables in Word anymore if my colleagues ask me to.

The Chocolate-Hazelnut Spread Experiment

9 March 2016

Back in 2010, I found myself explaining why the Italian chocolate-hazelnut spread Nutella¹ is better than its Norwegian imitationcompetitor Nugatti to my colleagues at the University of Bergen. Yes, like most Italians, I often brag about Italian food.

One of my colleagues challenged me: “I bet what you want that if I give you a slice of bread with Nutella and another one with Nugatti, you will not recognise the difference.”

I answered: “I bet what you want that I will recognise the difference between Nutella and three other spreads, while blindfolded.”

A few weeks later, I ran the first chocolate-hazelnut spread test at the University of Bergen. The test aimed at verifying if it is possible to recognise chocolate-hazelnut spreads while blindfolded.

28 Oct 2010: Me tasting one of the four chocolate-hazelnut spread samples. Photo by Federico Mancini.

Here is the structure of the test:

3 participants
4 chocolate-hazelnut spreads, known to the participants
Each participant tasted each spread in random order, while not blindfolded
Each participant tasted each spread again in random order, while blindfolded
After the second taste, each participant matched the spreads in the first taste with the spreads in the second taste (e.g., the third spread in the first taste was the first spread in the second taste)

And here are the results:

The participants correctly matched the spreads 10 times out of 12 (i.e., 83,33% of the times).

Galvanised by the results, I grew a passion for chocolate-hazelnut spreads. Before the test, I thought that the chocolate-hazelnut spread was Nutella and that everything else on the market was just an imitation. After the test, I tasted more than 20 different chocolate-hazelnut spreads and completely reconsidered my opinion on Nutella and everything else on the market.

2 Oct 2015: My collection of chocolate-hazelnut spreads

My enthusiasm for chocolate-hazelnut spreads quickly became known to my friends and colleagues. Last year (i.e., five years after the first chocolate-hazelnut spread test), I was introduced to a new researcher at the University of Oslo, who told me: “Wait a minute; you must be the Nutella guy!” I was not sure if to be proud or depressed by the fact that my input to the field of chocolate-hazelnut spreads got more attention than my contribution in the field of software engineering 🙂 Nevertheless, I decided it was time to replicate the chocolate-hazelnut spread test, turning it into a full-blown experiment.

Eventually, two weeks ago, I ran the chocolate-hazelnut experiment at SINTEF. The experiment aimed at ranking the best and worst tasting chocolate-hazelnut spreads, in addition to verifying if it is possible to recognise chocolate-hazelnut spreads while blindfolded. I know, this is not the kind of experiment you would expect from a researcher in software engineering… But it is serious research nevertheless 🙂

24 Feb 2016: Me presenting the historical context of the experiment. Photo by Einar Broch Johnsen.

24 Feb 2016: Participants tasting chocolate-hazelnut spread samples. Photo by Einar Broch Johnsen.

Here is the structure of the experiment:

12 participants (9 males, 3 females) from 7 countries (4 from Norway, 3 from Italy, 1 from Bulgaria, 1 from France, 1 from Russia, 1 from Sri Lanka, 1 from Ukraine)
4 chocolate-hazelnut spreads (Merenda from Greece, Nugatti from Norway, Nutella from Italy, Venchi Crema Suprema XV from Italy), known to me only
Each participant tasted each spread in random order, while not blindfolded
After the first taste, each participant chose the best and worst tasting spreads
Each participant tasted each spread again in random order, while blindfolded
After the second taste, each participant matched the spreads in the first taste with the spreads in the second taste (e.g., the third spread in the first taste was the first spread in the second taste)

And here are the results:

7 participants ranked Venchi, 3 participants ranked Merenda, and 2 participants ranked Nutella as the best tasting spread. No participants ranked Nugatti as the best tasting spread.

8 participants ranked Nugatti, 3 participants ranked Merenda, and 1 participant ranked Venchi as the worst tasting spread. No participants ranked Nutella as the worst tasting spread.

The participants correctly matched the spreads 33 times out of 48 (i.e., 68,75% of the times).

6 participants correctly matched all spreads, 3 participants correctly matched only 2 spreads, 3 participants correctly matched only 1 spread.

3 women out of 3 correctly matched all spreads.

3 men out of 9 correctly matched all spreads.

To summarise, the participants ranked Venchi as the best and Nugatti as the worst tasting spread; they correctly matched the spreads more than two-thirds of the times; women were better than men at correctly matching the spreads.

Can we conclude that my colleague at the University of Bergen lost his bet? Can we also generalise the result, and propose a generic framework for blind tasting foods and beverages? Comments and questions are more than welcome 🙂

Special thanks to my friends and colleagues who participated in the experiment.

Update 20 June 2018

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of replicating the experiment at EVRY.

Here is the structure of the experiment:

9 participants (6 males, 3 females) from 5 countries (5 from Norway, 1 from Ireland, 1 from Italy, 1 from the Netherlands, and 1 from Sweden)
4 chocolate-hazelnut spreads (First Price Nøttepålegg from Norway, Nugatti from Norway, Nutella from Italy, Venchi Crema Suprema Fondente² from Italy), known to me only
Each participant tasted each spread in random order, while not blindfolded
After the first taste, each participant chose the best and worst tasting spreads
Each participant tasted each spread again in random order, while blindfolded
After the second taste, each participant matched the spreads in the first taste with the spreads in the second taste (e.g., the third spread in the first taste was the first spread in the second taste)

And here are the results:

3 participants ranked Nutella, 2 participants ranked Nugatti, 2 participants ranked Nøttepålegg, and 2 participants ranked Venchi Crema Suprema Fondente as the best tasting spread.

5 participants ranked Nøttepålegg, 2 participants ranked Nugatti, and 2 participants ranked Venchi Crema Suprema Fondente as the worst tasting spread. No participants ranked Nutella as the worst tasting spread.

The participants correctly matched the spreads 17 times out of 36 (i.e., 47% of the times).

2 participants correctly matched all spreads, 3 participants correctly matched only 2 spreads, 3 participants correctly matched only 1 spread, 1 participant did not correctly match any spreads.

0 women out of 3 correctly matched all spreads.

2 men out of 6 correctly matched all spreads.

To summarise, the participants ranked Nutella as the best (although it was not a clear winner) and Nøttepålegg as the worst tasting spread; they correctly matched the spreads less than half of the times (contra more than two-thirds in the 2016 experiment); men were better than women at correctly matching the spreads (contra the opposite in the 2016 experiment).

To be honest, these results are disappointing. First, although dark chocolate may not be everyone’s taste, I expected the Venchi Crema Suprema Fondente to be ranked as best. Second, I expected the participants to match the spreads correctly at least two-thirds of the times. Finally, since it is scientifically proven that women have a better sense of smell than men, I expected women to be better than men at matching the spreads correctly. But… Data is data, and these results encourage me to replicate the experiments once again in the future.

Special thanks to my friends and colleagues who participated in the experiment.

Footnotes

If you have never heard about Nutella, or if you thought Nutella was German, you should read its history. ↩
Note that the Venchi spread used in the 2018 experiment is not the same as the one used in the 2016 experiment, but the dark chocolate variant ↩

We can put an end to imperial units

30 November 2014

“In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie¹ of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go fuck yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.” Wild Thing by Josh Bazell.

I have not read Wild Thing, and I do not have any idea about who Josh Bazell is, but I love this quote. It brilliantly summarises how superior the International System of Units (i.e., the modern form of the metric system) is to the system of imperial units, as shown in the following illustration:

Visual comparison of metric and imperial units

Yet, nowadays…

The USA is the only industrialised country in the world that still uses a system of units developed from English units (i.e., the United States customary system), as well as the only industrialised country in the world that has not adopted the International System of Units²(see Metrication in the USA).

Canada and the UK have adopted the International System of Units, but their metrication process is far from being complete (see Metrication in the UK and Canada).

Despite the fact only a minority of countries have not adopted the International System of Units, the majority of countries are still contaminated by the system of imperial units. Think about it… Even in continental Europe, where the metric system comes from and where the imperial units are nowhere in the education curriculum, screens are measured in inches, aircrafts’ altitude is measured in feet, watercrafts’ speed in measured in knots, etc.

The problem is that, to anybody who grew up with the International System of Units, an advertisement of a 55” TV screen tells very little about the actual size; a captain announcing that the plane is cruising at 30,000 feet tells very little about the actual altitude; a speedometer showing that the boat is cruising at 20 knots tells very little about the actual speed.

This is ridiculous and has got to stop. Governments of all countries adopting the International System of Units have to enforce that this system is used in absolutely every application and that any trace of imperial units is consigned to history.

If you are a man or woman of science, or if you simply have common sense, please share this post on every social network, and tag your tweets and instagrams with the tag #banimperialunits.

Here are some examples of tweets that you can send to your politicians.

Inch is not an official unit in Norway. Why are screens measured in inches and not centimetres? #banimperialunits

Foot is not an official unit in Italy. Why does the aviation industry use feet and not metres? #banimperialunits

Knot is not an official unit in Spain. Why does the ship industry use feet and not metres? #banimperialunits

Together, we can put an end to imperial units.

Footnotes

One may argue that calorie is not a unit of the metric system. In the International System of Units, which is an evolution of the metre-kilogram-second (MKS) system of units, which in turn is a variant of the metric system, both mechanical and thermal energies are measured in Joule. However, in the centimetre-gram-second (CGS) system of units, which is another variant of the metric system, the thermal energy is measured in Calories. Therefore, I would still consider Calorie as one of the units of the metric system, although not of the International System of Units. Besides, I do not think Josh Bazell aimed at being scientifically rigorous, so I would excuse him for not clarifying which variant of the metric system he refers to. ↩
The two other countries that do not adopt the International System of Units are Myanmar and Liberia, while the four other countries that adopt Fahrenheit for everyday applications are Bahamas, Belize, the Cayman Islands, and Palau. ↩

We can put an end to month-day-year dates

19 November 2013

What is today’s date? If you answered this question with April 20, 2024 (read April the twentieth, two thousand and twenty-four), you should go on reading.

The day-month-year date format (e.g., 20 April 2024) is officially adopted by the vast majority of the world’s countries.

The year-month-day date format (e.g., 2024-04-20) is officially adopted by China, Japan, Korea, and Iran, and is also the date format of the ISO 8601 standard.

The month-day-year date format (e.g., April 20, 2024) is officially adopted by the USA only (although contamination of this format can be found in a few other countries). Like most standards adopted in the USA, the month-day-year date format is bizarre at best, as shown in the following illustration:

Yet, nowadays…

The month-day-year format is used by a large number of people speaking English as a foreign language, who adopt Americanisms like these without thinking them through. Unfortunately, this is the case even in Europe, despite the fact that every European country–including the UK–officially adopts the day-month-year format.

Long story short: if you live outside the USA but use the month-day-year format when writing or speaking in English, you are doing it wrong. You do not suddenly use miles, pounds, and Fahrenheit when writing or speaking in English, right? Then please, in the interest of logic, do not use the month-day-year date format either. 🙂 Keep using the day-month-year or year-month-day date formats, like you learned in school. If you want to avoid any misunderstanding, just use the variants d MMMM yyyy or d MMM yyyy of the day-month-year date format (e.g., 20 April 2024 or 20 Apr 2024), which are the most readable ones.

So, once again, what is today’s date? It is 20 April 2024 (read the twentieth of April two thousand and twenty-four).

Six months in Oslo—Life of a researcher in the capital of Norway

9 June 2013

26 November 2012 at 3:00 in the morning. I was sitting on the bed of my bare room in Bergen, overwhelmed with fear and excitement, looking at my life packed into suitcases, backpacks, and boxes, and staring at my one-way ticket for the earliest morning flight to Oslo: “Will I like Oslo?”, “Will I enjoy my new life?”, “Will I miss Bergen?” Now, after six months in Oslo, I can finally answer these questions.

The city of Oslo may not have the charm of other western European capitals. It was built when Norway was among the poorest countries in Europe, and it is not difficult to notice. It has little classical architecture, and the one it has is not exactly impressive: even the neoclassical Royal Palace is way too dull to my taste. But Norway is among the richest countries in the world now, and the municipality is finally investing resources to give the city a new touch of contemporary architecture. The Fjord City project aims at opening the city towards the fjord by building housing and recreation on the waterfront part of the city centre. The Opera House in Bjørvika together with the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Tjuvholmen are notable examples of this development. Although controversial, I find these buildings amazing, and I believe that, together with the upcoming buildings such as the new Munch Museum in Bjørvika, they are going to give a unique character to the city.

Another distinctive feature of Oslo is that its people can be quite diverse. The various areas of Oslo have all different atmosphere, with Grünerløkka (Oslo East) featuring rather laid-back people and Frogner (Oslo West) featuring rather posh people—to the point that “vestkantgutt” (literally west side boys) is a common Norwegian expression to denote daddy’s boys. This heterogeneity is unique in Norway, where otherwise the law of Jante preserves uniformity across the society. Now there is good and bad with the law of Jante, and I must confess that I have incorporated some of these values into myself after many years in Norway, but one of its bad sides is that it tends to deprive people of significance. I find it interesting that this phenomenon is less evident in Oslo, where people are less afraid to show that they are successful.

I bought a new flat in Rodeløkka, north of Grünerløkka. It cost me a fortune, but it increased my quality of life dramatically 🙂 I have met plenty of charming people so far, both international and Norwegians, which made my social life enjoyable. I am also satisfied with my new job at SINTEF, where I am currently working on some challenging but stimulating EU projects—namely PaaSage, MODAClouds, and Broker@Cloud, for those interested. All in all, life has never been so good, and, to be honest, I have never really missed Bergen.