From: saurabh gupta <saurabhgupta1403@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:21:24 GMT
Subject: Re: Google Summer of Code 2009: GIT
Message-ID: <ab9fa62a0903110921k43599ba5u5187615b28650d89@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <49B7D84B.6080501@dawes.za.net>

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 8:57 PM, Rogan Dawes <lists@dawes.za.net> wrote:
> saurabh gupta wrote:
>>>> However, I think in merging and notifying about the conflicts in the xml
>>>> files, other things can also be put forward. Like the GUI will show the
>>>> number of tags differing and what are the new tags added and even if any
>>>> tag is renamed with the content unchanged. If possible, how about
>>>> showing a tree like structure (just like DOM model) to compare (or diff)
>>>> the two xml files.
>>>
>>> This is a little bit too low-level for my liking.  Taking the OpenOffice
>>> example again, the GUI should not expose XML at all...
>>
>> hmmmm.....I think I get your point somewhat. Let me do some research
>> over the formats and the background formats in which tools like
>> OpenOffice store the data in xml files. May be for docbooks by
>> OpenOffice, the best thing would be to give the *diff* output in terms
>> of lines.
>> I would also appreciate to know what you think and would like to see
>> the output in such case.
>
> I think that the implementation may make use of features inherent in the
> file format where possible. e.g. I suspect that OpenOffice has the
> ability to show "Tracked changes", and then allow the user to view the
> changes using the actual OpenOffice implementation.
>
> I suspect that that will get a lot more difficult with e.g. conflicts
> and merges, because I doubt that OOo has the ability to show changes
> from multiple versions.
>
> But I have to agree with Dscho, that the output would have to depend on
> the file type (OOo document), not just the data structure (e.g. XML)
> inside the file.
>
> A regular XML file diff could choose to ignore/collapse whitespace
> (pretty printing) when doing the comparison, to show things like moving
> a branch further down the tree.
>
> e.g.
>
> <i>text</i>
>
> vs
>
> <b><i>text</i></b>
>
> vs
>
> <b>
>  <i>text</i>
> </b>
>
> For plain XML, a textual diff might choose to show it with each element
> un-indented, and a standard text diff output:
>
> + <b>
>  <i>
>  text
>  </i>
> + </b>
>
> while a GUI diff might show the new element highlighted in a tree:
>
> #green#<b>#/green#
>  <i>
>   text
>
> I think that where reasonable that you should aim to have a text-only
> version that could be wrapped by a GUI. Obviously, this would be
> meaningless when diffing a JPG, for instance.

All right. I got what you mean to say.
>
> Ok, that was a bit rambling. I hope it helped more than it confused.
>
> Rogan
>



-- 
Saurabh Gupta
Senior,
Electronics and Communication Engg.
NSIT,New Delhi, India