4 ms·
Not even close, these are not plaintext based so you can't track changes with git, let alone automatic generation of formulas.
by charlieyu1 4y ago
Not even close, these are not plaintext based so you can't track changes with git, let alone automatic generation of formulas.
- chadcmulligan 4y agoWord has track changes, though not the math support it seems.
- tinus_hn 4y agoIn typical Microsoft fashion it has enough to check the box but not enough to actually be useful. Does it generate diffs/patches that ultimately can be used to reconstruct the document? Can I take a document and apply a patch and get exactly the same as you get? Can I reorder and edit patches? The answer is no.
- chadcmulligan 4y agoInteresting, I didn't know Tex users would want those sort of facilities. I've used Word with track changes in enterprise environments and it does the job, I've never had to use patches for it though (and wouldn't).
- DocTomoe 4y agoFor enterprise environments, where demands usually are low to non-existent, Word does fine. In academic environments, when journals are involved, when a document is being worked on by several people simultaneously (in varying meanings of that word) and when data may come from several different outside sources, it is massively inadequate.
- charlieyu1 4y agoI think there is demand of these features for Word users in the enterprise. Version tracking or reusing templates is huge productivity boost and also helps reducing mistakes. It is only that enterprise users have never thought of that because they don't know it is even possible.
- bombcar 4y agoWord with integrated git-like history would be a godsend if someone could develop it. As it is, it's easier to either cripple along with track changes and friends or teach everyone how to use Markdown or LaTeX.
- smithza 4y ago.docx files are a zip folder of plaintext XML files. Theoretically they could be tracked with git if you unzip/zip every commit/checkout.
- charlieyu1 4y agoI actually tried to hash .docx files to keep track of them. Turns out there are random timestamp data that the resulting file is different every time
- int_19h 4y agoThis doesn't work well when XML is not hand-edited, but rather a dump of some in-memory structure - there are many cases where e.g. order is not important, so it can be essentially random during serialization, and that then shows up as spurious diffs.