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ygra
I wrote something similar while I was writing my diploma thesis, albeit not that visual. For me it was handy to see whether I was making any progress, so I regularly updated a CSV file with the current number of pages, lines, words, figures, code lines, and code comments. The idea was that on every day I did something I could at least look at the data and see how much (also the script automatically adjusted page, line and word count for the appendix which I didn't want to count).
sanderjd
That's really neat! I'm not sure if this is intentional because your work is private, but I would love it if I could click on the images or SHAs to go actually see the thing.
hds
At the moment I'm a little hesitant to make it public. Partly because there's a large chunk of unpublished research in there, but also because some of the early drafts are a little embarrassing.

Perhaps when the thesis is deposited (and hence public) I could add that in for "historical" interest.

sanderjd
Yeah, totally understandable.
j2kun
Definitely don't make it public. I know people who have had their thesis topics scooped.
Braunbart
Yep, I instinctively clicked on one of the pages to see it bigger.
burritofanatic
Excellent! People writing important papers really should be using Git. When documents are extremely complex, previously removed portions can have pertinence later.
Fomite
This doesn't work particularly well for fields not using LaTeX as their document creation tool.
dovel
Why is that?
jaredsohn
I would think the GP means that git works much better if you are creating a document in a non-binary format (of which LaTeX is one example.)
irremediable
Seconded -- at least for anyone using LaTeX or another git-friendly format. I used git for my masters dissertation recently, and it was very useful to be able to checkout old versions and compare them with its then-current state.
toppy
That's an excellent solution for big problem in my country (not at PhD level though) namely plagiarism. Make students to use such system, turn autocommit on and you can see their progress and all deviations (big chunks of text appearing from nowhere etc.).
clarkmoody
While you mention that you are hesitant to release the content of the dissertation prematurely, could you instead release the build tools you used to make your "flatplans"?

It would be a huge help to those of us about to write our dissertations :-)

mcguire
Forget the dissertation. Nobody really reads those (really, not even my committee).

What we want to watch in real-time is the defense. Especially the spanking tunnel at the end.

muhfuhkuh
This is really cool stuff. Reminds me of a stripped down version of notch's live coding sessions for Ludum Dare.

Any reason you chose LaTeX as your content dev language and publishing over something a little "easier" like DocBook XML and Publican (which uses LaTeX as an intermediate build language to create PDFs)? Is it required, what you're used to, or purity of notation?

hds
Partly it's what I'm used to, but I've yet to find anything "easier" for the large amount of mathematics I typeset. There is a lot of notation and very little graphics or difficult formatting.
irremediable
I think LaTeX remains the go-to language for this kind of stuff. Certainly, every STEM academic I've worked with has used it.
j2kun
There's nothing more suspicious than a math paper written in something besides TeX.
pagekicker
I was expecting to see the ten-year process involving teaching assistantship, employment, marriage, and children, all illumninated by the light of a candle at 2 am in a basement office next to the crib.
apepe
You could do it in Authorea (Git+LaTeX) and actually show us what you are writing too!
CaRDiaK
Why am I obsessing over the arrow not quite lining up on the points of time? Until the fourth tick, then following some pattern..