I have been supporting a web application at work for our Call Center unit for about 2 years now. The app is written in ASP.NET 3.5 with SQL server 2005 database. I’ve been asked to expand the call detail section to allow agents to edit the current call note with the ability to revert back to its previous version. Now, that’s all cool but now the manager wants to be able to click on any particular note and see all edits with changes highlighted in yellow (and if something was deleted, he wants to SEE the deleted text crossed out). Actually, what I need is very similar to how Stackoverflow handles edits on their questions. I’ve been thinking about how to go about this and after doing research and Google-ing of course, I am still unsure which route to take. I am fairly new to .NET development. Any ideas on the best technique for highlighting the changes in UI? I am afraid I am going to have to store a copy of the entire note each time they make a change because the manager wants to be able to easily review notes and revert back to ANY version (not just the most recent one) before sending the monthly call report off to our VIP customers. Since this department OFTEN changes their mind on things, I want to make sure the new functionality is scalable and easy to maintain. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I am really just looking for someone to point me in the right direction; maybe there are some tools out there that can be useful, recommended keywords in Google lookup, etc.
This will be difficult do to.
You'll need a "text editor" control that can not only edit the text, but which can also tell you what changes were made.
You then need to store not only the final text string, but also the list of changes
You'll then need to be able to display the text plus changes, using strike-outs, and different colors for inserts vs. changes
You'll need to do this not only for the changes of a single user, but you'll need to store each users' changes in the database, and will need to be able to display all the changes, all at once.
Your manager should be really sure he needs this.
Some tools for doing the diff for you can be found at Any decent text diff/merge engine for .NET?.
This would entail storing every version like you say. This should allow you to implement it similarly to SO. I seem to recall reading or hearing Jeff mention it, but wasn't able to find it, likely in one of the SO podcasts.
Easiest would be to store the text for each revision, then when the user wants to see the diff use a diff tool to generate the highlighted text.
Here is some Javascript diff code:
http://ejohn.org/projects/javascript-diff-algorithm/
If all the computers have Word installed you may be able to use a Word control to accomplish this. TortoiseSVN has scripts in its program directory which can take two word documents and produce a document with changes highlighted. To see this create c:\aaa.doc and bbb.doc, then install TortoiseSVN and run:
wscript.exe "C:\program files\tortoisesvn\Diff-Scripts\diff-doc.js" c:\aaa.doc c:\bbb.doc //E:javascript
I think you should see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_control
Related
I know this is too strange question, but we have multiple authors of one document and some contributors use OpenOffice to edit document, originating and edited by majority in MS word. Document is quite complex with differently structured paragraphs and fonts, bullets, numbering, embedded pictures, references to comments under the line, copied/pasted sections pasted with source formatting instead of pure text etc., so generally "fragile" and maybe little bit exceeding expectations of OpenOffice authors for MS compatibility. Bottom line is about various formatting issues, glue-ing of some words (occasionally space is missing), page footer/header modified or completely disappeared etc. We are unable to control behaviour of contributors and editors to the extent I would like to have, so I am trying to findout whether is there a way how to force users to use exclusively MS word for particular docx and to prevent using anything else? (I am not on MS payroll, I personally moved couple of people around me with "standard" document writing needs to OpenOffice, but incompatibility in this case creates useless redaction work for us.)
Thanks for any hint.
whether is there a way how to force users to use exclusively MS word for particular docx and to prevent using anything else
To me, it sounds like a terrible idea to try to enforce this with a macro or similar (and it probably wouldn't work even if you tried). Instead, come up with a better workflow and communicate with anyone who may be involved so they know what to do.
First question, is the document under configuration control? For example, if a bad change is made, do you have a way of going back to a previous version? There are many different configuration management tools available, both free and commercial.
Next, I would strongly recommend making final changes with only one Office suite. Pick either LibreOffice (or Apache OpenOffice - is that what you mean by OpenOffice? The OpenOffice.org suite was forked several years ago) or MS Word to be the official editing tool, but not both.
If you pick MS Word, then people can still make preliminary changes to the document using LibreOffice. However, someone with MS Word will then need to use a Diff tool to see the changes and then use MS Word to incorporate those changes into the document. Or ideally, Track Changes would be turned on to make it easier to see what changes were made and who made them. Comments can also be added to explain why changes were made.
What is even better is to get people to send marked-up PDF files that contain their proposed changes. PDF files cannot be edited, which is good because it avoids the kinds of problems that led you to write this question, and also the formatting changes they made will not appear differently on another computer. However, this requires a certain amount of education so that everyone agrees to do it this way, and in my experience, that's not easy with a diverse group.
If you ever see that someone has made changes to the main document using LibreOffice, you or someone else needs to go back to the latest version not edited by LibreOffice and then use MS Word to incorporate all of the new changes.
At this point, if both suites have been used to edit the document, then I would probably start off with a new blank document and copy all of the text unformatted into it. This would require redoing all tables and other formatting. Otherwise, it's likely to be nearly impossible to get a clean document, and the underlying formatting may have no end to the number of problems that keep popping up.
I collaborate with other researchers and frequently have the following work flow:
I write a draft in Emacs org, then export it to docx.
Other authors make edits using track changes and add comments.
I revise the draft in emacs org.
For step 3, I import back the docx file manually, which typically involves:
- Accepting all track changes.
- C&P'ing text back into the org file, making sure that I do not delete markups (pandoc can help here).
- Putting the comments in a list and making todos and further edits; often I write down a note about what I did to address the comment.
I've been looking for ways to make this process better. I found other discussions of this issue, and it boils down to: if you can, have your collaborators edit the manuscript as a text file (not realistic for me, at list not at this point); or do some manual import similar to the one I described above.
So this post is about your thoughts / ideas regarding a great solution to importing back edited docx files that might become reality in the future, and how it could be done.
I think there are two parts here:
How to automatically import back text without destroying markups such as footnotes, references etc.?
How to automatically extract all the notes and integrate them into the Emacs org file?
For the second question, my vision would be to have some sort of comment blocks above the paragraph of the comment, or a list of headlines, each of them representing a comment and a link to the paragraph. A properties drawer would be a great additional feature, it could have one entry for open/closed and one entry for response / notes.
P.S.: I think this is a real barrier to using text-based manuscript writing and it would be a huge step forward if there was a good way. Even more, with all the capabilities of Emacs org, I bet the end result would be much better then revising a paper within word, which is just painful.
Here's how you might be able to do it
assume all changes are properly marked.
assume you know the "base version" of your org file.
assume every marked change comes with a "before" and an "after".
Then, analyze the .docx (same for .odt) looking for marked changes. Ignore everything else. Take the "before" version of each change, turn it into plain text, and try to find the matching element in the org file, then replace that text with the "after" version.
For comments, you could probably try a similar approach.
Caveat: I have no idea how easy/hard it is to find the marked changes, extract the "before/after" info and turn it into plain text.
Oh, and this will probably only work acceptably for small localized changes, e.g. the kind of thing you might get from a reviewer. For things coming from another author who may end up making larger changes and reorganizations it'll probably break down miserably.
Is there a plugin that lets you manually add files to lists/categories? Something like Mylyn but manual and more files--kind of the way Gmail manages mail--a tagging system.
If I let mylyn manage my windows it actually closes them without any way to shut off (Something I absolutely cannot tolerate, I use my open windows to remind me of what I'm working on--my memory absolutely NEEDS the help)--on top of that it automatically adds files to lists just because that list happens to be open when I start doing something else.
I guess I'm thinking of a plugin that offers a different version of the "Package Explorer", one that is organized by task instead of by package hierarchy, and allows you to move files around at will.
...or is there a way to adapt an existing tool to do this (without actually moving the files around, of course!) Bookmarks don't seem to offer a "Grouping" but using a common first word for the description in my bookmarks may work... Any other ideas?
After messing with it a bit more, it looks like bookmarks might do what I want. It is possible to filter bookmarks by searching the subject string, so as long as I put tags in the subject string I can select a sub-filter and have it bring up all the relevant files for a given task.
I won't accept this for a while in case someone has a better answer (a plugin perhaps?)
Does anyone know of a software or system for automatically tracking and logging exact line code changes into a log file?
For example, lets say I edit 7 files on Jan 16th, and I add and modify several lines of code in each file.
Is there a software or tool of any kind that would automagically know what edits I made, what was changed, and log the details in date order line-item file?
I am guessing something exists like this, but I cannot find out what I should be searching for. I looked at SVN and some other similar, but didn't get these capabilities from the descriptions I read.
There's nothing that would automagically know this. This sort of information is easy to come by as a side-effect of using virtually any version control system though. It sounds like you're not using any VCS, you should start doing so now. SVN is a good option to start with.
Just something that will save changes automatically, while i'm editing say in gedit, or notepad plus plus, or even windows text editor, etc.
I can't seem to find exactly what I'm looking for and svn, bzr, and Git are too complicated. One should be able to start a new project, start writing code, and that's it!
So... I'm going to create a whole new version control system that will be more amazing and simple than all the rest! Unless something already exists? Whether it be online, or a local install, whatevs.
EDIT: Ok, the above paragraph was a bit absurd now that I read it much later. I use Git now, and Git is awesome.
Many text editors will create a backup copy of the prior version when you do a save.
Of course, this is pitiful compared to an actual version control system. You should know that many VCS integrate with editors so commits are very simple quick commands.
The minor time it takes to create a repository is insignificant compared to the time it will save you during the project.
Frankly, this sounds like an argument from ignorance.
I found this nice little Gedit plugin: http://nerdblog.pl/2009/06/01/save-and-commit-to-git-plugin-for-gedit-2-26ave/