Tools: Simultaneous revision of Word files?

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

A question arose concerning our current process of online editing of
documents produced in Word 97. We know that it's possible to review a
document _sequentially_ using revision tracking, but is there any way to
review a document _simultaneously_? The goal would be to avoid having to
integrate the edits/reviews from several separate files in a single master
file by keeping all edits in a single file; we'd also like to conduct such
reviews in parallel rather than in sequence. 

I'm leery about using the "compare documents" and "versioning" features of
Word because (respectively) I've had colleagues report that the former is
unreliable (i.e., Word occasionally misses changes) and that the latter can
be a recipe for disaster (file corruption). Acrobat Business Tools might
also work if it permits simultaneous editing.

Any suggestions, cautionary tales, or other workarounds that people have
developed?

--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

"Technical writing... requires understanding the audience, understanding
what activities the user wants to accomplish, and translating the often
idiosyncratic and unplanned design into something that appears to make
sense."--Donald Norman, The Invisible Computer