I can not think of any scenario where svn would be preferable over a distributed vcs such as git or mercurial. They can both be used exactly the same way as svn if you feel for it but come with tons of other benefits. I even think there's less friction to start with for non techincal people because you are always working in "everything always checked out"-mode and there is no need for a common server. Just let them edit in peace and when you want to merge then pull from their local repo.
I don't know the state of visual tools for git but tortoisehg for mercurial is quite easy to get started with.
What? The result would be exactly the same, right? You don't have your unpushed commit if your laptop is broken, neither with svn nor with git. The only difference is that you still can use your local git repository if your server burns down, but you can't do that with svn.
>The only difference is that you still can use your local git repository if your server burns down, but you can't do that with svn.
Even then I can `svn relocate`.
Look, I am not defending SVN for software development, I am a happy git camper. But git for technical writing is simply the wrong tool for the wrong job.
The biggest advantage of svn over git for non-technical users is that you can never end up with commit that then conflicts with another submit (as submits all happen on the server).
I have had various beginner git users get very confused when dealing with conflicts -- I have got myself quite confused on occasion too.
I don't know the state of visual tools for git but tortoisehg for mercurial is quite easy to get started with.