[oXygen-user] Managing revisions

Tue Jul 9 02:03:43 CDT 2019

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> 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>> 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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