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OOXML is typically stored as a compressed ZIP archive. Even when its decompressed to its constituent XML files, modifications are performed without much regard
by jmillikin 17y ago
OOXML is typically stored as a compressed ZIP archive. Even when its decompressed to its constituent XML files, modifications are performed without much regard to how a diff will look.
This applies to auto-generated XML in general -- ODT is not immune. LaTeX and reStructuredText are the only formats I know of which are suitable for professional publication and can be usefully diffed.
- _pi 17y agoThat's very interesting. Why is auto-generated XML hard to diff?
- superchink 17y agoThat's because XML does not guarantee order of elements.
- jamesbritt 17y ago"That's because XML does not guarantee order of elements." It better, or else it's broken. In XML, element order matters. Attribute order does not.
- atourino 17y agoConsider an XML file consisting of one long line of text. A diff would not be very useful in that case.
- michaelneale 17y agoI guess an XML aware diff could work though? certainly not at all line based...
- jamesbritt 17y agoIf it did node-based diffs.
- _pi 17y agoMost diffs do that. The Diff that ships with gvim on Windows has this option on by default and I couldn't find where to turn it off because it was severely screwing up what I was diffing.