Google Docs formatting
That idea I had of keeping my resume in Google Docs so I wouldn’t have to go digging for it when the time came, and so I could version it more easily? Yeah. Nifty. Sensible. Until it came time to actually produce a copy that I can hand someone. Then the formatting went all to hell. I don’t do a lot of fancy formatting on my resumes, so having to clean up as much as I did was unexpected.
On the other hand, I knew exactly where it was.
02 Oct 2007 Sam
Have you thought about ThinkFree instead? A lot of people see them as a more high fidelity online word proc. They also have an offline version with synchronization in beta – I can send you an invite if you want.
If all you want to do is be able to find it, why not build it in Word, Pages, TeX, or whatever your favorite app is, then save it as a PDF. Send both the original and the PDF version to yourself in gmail.
Now you have a platform independent version (the PDF) that you can shoot from anyplace you can get to Gmail. You also can get the editable version that you can work on when needed.
Put the word resume somewhere in the message and gmail’s search will find it for you.
Yes, I’ve done that. But it’s so mundane, Jim. ;)
I tried Google Docs hoping for better versioning than several saved versions would give me. In the past I’ve kept my home directory in Subversion, but I’ve drifted away from that. GDocs was an experiment, and it seemed to be going well, until it mattered. So now I’ll go the mundane route.
Though I will be trying ThinkFree for kicks, thanks to Scott. And Buzzword, though far less full-featured, looks pretty sweet.
Ahhh. I forgot about the hidden, but always present, must-be-cool requirement. :-)
I’ve found GoogleDocs, interesting, but not quite all the way there. Their spreadsheet is clunky, for example. I find manipulating column width cumbersome.
Have you tried ThinkFree yet?
Yeah, LaTeX is the way. The next time I do a reformat, I’m doing it in LaTex. Believe it or not for a resume I think it will be way easier to use than something like Word.
Spoken like a true programmer, Mike.
And as a programmer, I happen to think you’re right. I’m sure LaTeX would be a good fit for my resume. I’ll give that a shot, too.
Now that Google Docs supports saving as PDF (and uploading PDFs), maybe you’re in luck again. You could keep your resume in Google Docs, and spit out a PDF version whenever you like. You could also upload the latest PDF version to Google Docs if you like having a current copy handy.