[oXygen-user] Managing revisions

Oxygen XML Editor Support (Radu Coravu) support at oxygenxml.com
Tue Jul 9 03:18:08 CDT 2019


Hi Yves,

It's actually more related to the fact that I do not know what they want 
to obtain, do they want to build a what's new list automatically when 
publishing or do they just want to mark modified content in the PDF/HTML 
so that internal reviewers focus on it when reviewing?

Regards,
Radu

Radu Coravu
<oXygen/> XML Editor
http://www.oxygenxml.com

On 7/9/2019 10:03 AM, Yves Barbion wrote:
> Hi Radu
>
> Thank for your detailed comments. Fair enough, I fully understand that
> there have to be enough users who request this feature before you invest
> the resources to implement this.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Yves
>
> On Mon, 8 Jul 2019 at 14:49, Oxygen XML Editor Support (Radu Coravu)
> <support at oxygenxml.com <mailto:support at oxygenxml.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Yves,
>
>     Coming back to your request:
>
>     >   Track changes automatically, i.e. without having to change the
>     @rev attribute manually
>
>     Honestly I don't think that's a good idea.
>     Looking at how many changes our technical documentation writer does
>     between releases, how many spell check errors he fixes, how much
>     content
>     he reuses, how much phrasing of existing paragraphs he changes, some of
>     the changes the technical writer does should not appear as revisions
>     because they are small bug fixes in the existing DITA content.
>     So having the application mark as revisions every DITA element in which
>     changes have been done will generate in the end a very large list of
>     revisions, a list which will be overwhelming to read by anyone.
>     Also if I change a single character in a paragraph (a spell check) that
>     entire paragraph which may span half a page will be marked as a
>     revision.
>
>     To whom is this revision list destined? Is it for the end user (like a
>     list of new features) or is it for an internal reviewer?
>     If the list is for the end user maybe it should be manually created
>     because the end user does not need to know that a certain paragraph was
>     re-written to improve its readability.
>     If the list is for an internal reviewer, maybe the tech writers should
>     use change tracking instead because change tracking and comments
>     already
>     can be made to appear in the published output.
>
>     The problem with adding new functionality to Oxygen is making sure that
>     functionality covers as many similar use cases as possible. If I only
>     cover a company's use case but my support for revisions is not generic
>     enough to cover the use cases of other companies, then it's not worth
>     implementing it.
>     So ideally I would need to be in direct contact with two or more
>     companies requiring this and understand if we can build a solution
>     which
>     would satisfy lots of various company-specific needs.
>     Because in the end, if the revision-related improvements are kind of
>     company-specific it's not worth in investing resources to add the
>     improvements in Oxygen.
>     In a way this is why Oxygen has API, this is why we have support for
>     plugins, for custom validation and why the publishing can be
>     customized,
>     in order to cover company specific requirements with company specific
>     customizations made by a company which could have a separate contract
>     with that company based on providing this service.
>
>     Regards,
>     Radu
>
>     Radu Coravu
>     <oXygen/> XML Editor
>     http://www.oxygenxml.com
>
>     On 7/8/2019 2:52 PM, Yves Barbion wrote:
>     > Thank you for your reply, Radu.
>     >
>     > So I understand that some custom development work would need to be
>     done,
>     > using the various technologies (oXygen plugin, CSS, XSLT...). We are
>     > getting requests like these quite regularly from our oXygen customers,
>     > so I think it would be very nice to have this as a standard feature in
>     > one of the next releases of oXygen XML Author/Editor.
>     >
>     > Kind regards
>     >
>     > Yves
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     > On Mon, 8 Jul 2019 at 09:38, Oxygen XML Editor Support (Radu Coravu)
>     > <support at oxygenxml.com <mailto:support at oxygenxml.com>
>     <mailto:support at oxygenxml.com <mailto:support at oxygenxml.com>>> wrote:
>     >
>     >     Hi Yves,
>     >
>     >     I see no one else answered this on the Oxygen Users List.
>     >
>     >     I'm linking to the similar thread you started on the DITA
>     Users List:
>     >
>     >
>      https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/dita-users/conversations/topics/44837
>     >
>     >     My answers for your questions would be:
>     >
>     >     >     Track changes automatically, i.e. without having to
>     change the
>     >     @rev attribute manually
>     >
>     >     By "track changes" you mean automatically setting the @rev
>     attribute on
>     >     modified elements. And this can be done with a custom Oxygen
>     plugin.
>     >
>     >     >     Indicate the changed paragraphs with change bars in the PDF
>     >     (using Miramo)
>     >
>     >     Using our DITA + CSS = PDF plugin this could quite easily be
>     done, add
>     >     some CSS selectors which add borders for elements containing
>     the @rev
>     >     attribute.
>     >
>     >     >     Generate a list of revisions
>     >
>     >     You would need some kind of custom XSLT processing going
>     through all
>     >     topics and creating maybe a DITA topic containing links to all
>     changed
>     >     topics.
>     >
>     >     Regards,
>     >     Radu
>     >
>     >     Radu Coravu
>     >     <oXygen/> XML Editor
>     >     http://www.oxygenxml.com
>     >
>     >     On 7/4/2019 10:57 AM, Yves Barbion wrote:
>     >     > Hi group
>     >     >
>     >     > I'm using oXygen XML Editor version 21 to author DITA-structured
>     >     content
>     >     > and I was wondering how to manage revisions. This is what
>     I'd like
>     >     to do:
>     >     >
>     >     >   * Track changes automatically, i.e. without having to
>     change the
>     >     @rev
>     >     >     attribute manually
>     >     >   * Indicate the changed paragraphs with change bars in the
>     PDF (using
>     >     >     Miramo)
>     >     >   * Generate a list of revisions
>     >     >
>     >     > I'm not using a CCMS or a version management system at this
>     moment.
>     >     >
>     >     > Any ideas?
>     >     >
>     >     > Thanks
>     >     >
>     >     > Yves
>     >     >
>     >     >
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