[oXygen-user] Managing revisions
Christophe Marchand
cmarchand at oxiane.com
Tue Jul 9 04:35:10 CDT 2019
Just my 2 cents...
If the modified DITA file is a source file, and if users want to
register all changes, why do not use a VCS tool, like GIT or other ones ?
My experience tells me that there are many levels of change history :
ones for developers / redactors, others for reviewers, others again for
market team, and so on...
Why do not use different tools for the different levels of change
history needed ?
Best regards,
Christophe
Le 09/07/2019 à 10:18, Oxygen XML Editor Support (Radu Coravu) a écrit :
> 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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