[WebODF] EditInfo and change tracking

[Jos van den Oever]

Hello Philip,

On 05/09/2013 03:17 AM, Philip Peitsch wrote:
>
> Is there any technical reason that the edit system couldn't be
> implemented using the standard ODT change tracking mechanisms?
> (http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/os/OpenDocument-v1.2-os-part1.html#__RefHeading__1415168_253892949)
>
> Looking at the spec, the change-info provides an author, time and
> optional comment related to the change. Lining this up visually with the
> start and endpoints seems simple enough.
>
> The primary benefit of this approach is that documents with change
> tracking active will actually display sensibly in WebODDF... and editing
> from WebODF will export nicely into other suites.
>
> This isn't a high priority item for me, more a technical musing about
> whether it was specifically considered and avoided :)

Yes, OpenDocument Format has a method for tracking changes. We have not 
looked into using the current method of tracking changes deeply. There 
are a few reasons why we have not done so.

The first reason is that the change tracking is specified in-line in the 
XML. Since we load all the XML into the DOM and keep it there that would 
be quite a large overhead. Every character that is being typed is a 
change in our real-time editing. The ODF change tracking mechanism is 
meant for sharing larger changes.

I do not use change tracking a lot and when I do the people that I use 
it with use OpenOffice and/or LibreOffice and that works well. If WebODF 
could understand such documents it would be nice. The largest challenge 
would be in figuring out how to display that.

Currently, the ODF Technical Committee is working on a new way to track 
changes in ODF. This new way should support real-time changes better by 
specifying every change as an operation on the document, like WebODF 
does at the moment.

Here you can see some work in progress:
https://wiki.oasis-open.org/office/Insertion%20of%20a%20paragraph

Cheers,
Jos