Does anyone know of a piece of software (preferably cross platform) that makes sharing written work with a small group of people and offering feedback easy to do? I suppose there’s always Word’s “Track Changes” but it just isn’t that ideal for offering feedback to one another (and if someone happens to not own Word, it’s a pretty hefty investment).
I’ve tried looking for this kind of thing online without much luck. I suppose it’s possible that this is a niche that just hasn’t been filled yet, but I’m still hopeful.
I recommend OpenOffice.org Writer. It has a feature comparable to Word’s “Track Changes” and can open/write Word DOC files (though there are problems when using Word files with “tracked changes”).
It is available for free and runs on Windows, Linux, Solaris, BSD and Mac OS X (there are 2 editions: the “original” OpenOffice.org requiring X11 and the more comfortable NeoOffice). You can download it from openoffice.org.
In my eyes, the OpenOffice.org suite is a complete replacement for Microsoft Office, in some parts it is even considerably better.
Have you had a look at Google Documents? It is a simple, web based word processor (based on HTML) which allows collaboration or sharing with other individuals. Revisions can be viewed and compared much like on Wikipedia. It sounds like you are less interested in full collaborations (which can be done in real-time), and more interested in review & feedback – and I think it would be suited well for that too, as it has a comment feature.
Plus, it exports to a number of common formats, including OpenOffice and Word.