Diff Tool Merge Change as a Tracked Change

[dreifsnider]

Hi,

My team would like the ability to merge changes into a file as a tracked change instead of a straight merge. This would assist us in our translation workflow.

Our current translation workflow consists of the following steps:

1. Using Trados, import DITA XML files to be translated.
2. Translate files.
3. Export translated files as DITA XML.
4. Identify new translations for reviewers.
5. Send DITA XML files with list of new translations to reviewers.

We've recently begun using Web Author and Content Fusion to send translated content to reviewers (step 5). The translation reviewers would like to see all new translations as a tracked change that they can easily and quickly read through in the Review panel. One thought we had was that it would be nice if we could diff and merge the newly translated files into the existing files as a tracked changed. This would let us quickly import and merge the translated DITA XML files and send them to our translation reviewers using Web Author and Content Fusion.

Thanks!

Daniel

[cristi_talau]

Hello,

The use-case that you describe seems very reasonable - I registered it as a feature request for Content Fusion.
Currently there are several approaches that might prove useful:

• When creating a review task, create it from the original translations file and then replace the content of the file with the new version. This way, in the Activity stream, there will be a diff link that reviewers will be able to use to see what was changed. Unfortunately, they cannot edit directly on the diff, but they can have another tab open where they can make the required corrections.

• Use an external tool to generate the diff file with tracked changes. For example, as far as I know, Delta XML offers such a tool.

Best,
Cristian

[dreifsnider]

Hi Cristian,

Thank you for your reply and for registering it as a feature for Content Fusion!

We were also thinking that this feature would help us in the Diff Files and Diff Directories applications, since we often compare our local files against the exported files from Trados to see the specific translated strings that changed. This happens before we add the files to a review task in Content Fusion.

We will also investigate the approaches you mentioned as well. Do you know if Delta XML can merge changes as an oxy_insert processing instruction?

Thanks again!

Daniel

[cristi_talau]

Hello,
I added your vote to the feature request about the Compare Files dialog. We will update this thread when we release this functionality.

Regarding the Delta XML functionality, I have very limited knowledge of what their tool is doing, mainly based on some conference presentations, but I think they will be happy to provide you with the details you need.

Best,
Cristian

[teo]

Some news related to this thread thanks to the recently released version 26 of the Oxygen suite.
Follow this link for more information: https://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_editor/wh ... Comparison
The 2 compare actions recently added to the Tools menu are also available as scripts.

[dreifsnider]

Thanks for the update and for this feature! This will be incredibly useful to us.