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Show HN: Version Control for Microsoft Word

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Re: Show HN: Version Control for Microsoft Word

#71

Post by rubidium »

bArray wrote: post #69

Firstly, great job in getting that mess to play well with Git! The main limitation with Git is that it only works with plain text (think Windows Notepad). I have seen authors resort to plain text or markdown in order to take advantage of Git, but this means losing all of your rich formatting such as images and fonts. This is usually too much of a sacrifice for companies as formatting needs to be reapplied with each p…

Completely disagree. There's a bunch of "word-like markdown editors" out there. We don't need one more of those.

There's a real market here. Word is huge, and people aren't gonna give it up. This looks to be a good technical solution. Trying to move people from word to markdown is an ok ideal, but not a practical business move.

My advice to the creator, ignore bArray's advice.

Re: Show HN: Version Control for Microsoft Word

#72

Post by mark212 »

nvlr wrote: post #38

This is very cool, and I wish we had something like this, but I don't see many law firms going for it. Most law firms (and I would guess all major ones) will not allow uploading of client documents or work-product to any cloud provider, let alone an unproven start up. This risk is frankly way too high. The only way I see this happening in the legal context is if it can be run from the firm's servers with all data hos…

This isn't as absolute as you'd think, at least in the firms I've seen here in the US. Nearly all have shifted to cloud solutions for some documents at least in the litigation world where I dwell, especially in doc production and discovery. In a recent class action, my team was sent opposing counsel's link to the Box folder with their 4gb+ docs sent over from their client. Which shows that the clients are demanding that their outside counsel use some of the tools that they've embraced.

You're right with respect to internal memos, notes, drafts of pleadings, etc. But I suspect this is changing too as more lawyers want to be able to work on docs from their phones and iPads and remote laptops.

Re: Show HN: Version Control for Microsoft Word

#73

Post by rubidium »

kairuku wrote: post #67
aplaice wrote: post #36

Slight aside (since LibreOffice != Word, and XML diffs are still horribly messy): If you save your LibreOffice documents in flat XML format, (e.g. fods, fodt instead of ods, odt), placing them under version control becomes slightly less annoying — the diffs become at least _potentially_ human readable. See also: http://blog.riemann.cc/2013/04/23/versioning-of-openoffice-l... https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/globa…

Word can also save in flat XML format, but it's really verbose (really just a listing of all the document parts).

And I can "build a car". But I wouldn't want to drive it.

Re: Show HN: Version Control for Microsoft Word

#74

Post by mark212 »

Folcon wrote: post #15
irl_ wrote: post #10

Took me a while of reading here to realise, there's no git here. This is a seperate thing that cannot be integrated with your existing stuff, if you're already using Git. I'd like to have the option of Word documents in Git but I don't want a whole other system just for the special snowflake that is Word as I'm already using Git for managing LaTeX documents and doing that entirely on my own infra.

Is that something people care about though? I'm asking honestly as someone who was in this space several years ago, I'm not convinced that even if it was backed to git that would be a big enough lure to make people want to use it. Please feel free to convince me I'm wrong :)...

Every lawyer who works in litigation would give an arm for something like this if it actually works. I spend so much of my time in "Track Changes" under Word and after three redlines it's basically incomprehensible.

Re: Show HN: Version Control for Microsoft Word

#75

Post by scrumper »

IanWhalen wrote: post #23
mtgx wrote: post #2

So Google Docs? It seems close enough. What's the main advantage over Google Docs?

The addition of tags/versions is something that I would kill for in Google Docs. It would make life so much easier in my current role if we had the ability to tag a version so that you can easily see a diff between that specific, tagged version and the current version (rather than just seeing diffs over time as it is currently implemented).

Exactly this. Right now, Google Docs marries the worst aspects of version control (long, weird, unstructured, incoherent change history) and the worst of no version control at all (the need to keep creating final.v2.edited.JS_changes copies as a multi-author document evolves).

I'm fairly convinced that Google doesn't really give a shit about their apps suite. The apps have barely changed in years.

Re: Show HN: Version Control for Microsoft Word

#77

Post by gigelu »

This is interesting, but what's wrong with "Track Changes"? (a feature Word had for at least 10+ years now). I believe for most people that is more than enough for version control purposes. For tech people that actually know what Git is and how to use it, I bet they'd want real Git integration, or they'd choose to store the document in a different (more easily managed by Git) format such as .md or .html.

Re: Show HN: Version Control for Microsoft Word

#78

Post by TickleSteve »

emodendroket wrote: post #61
btown wrote: post #17

If all you need is to diff documents (Word, Excel, PPT, or arbitrary PDFs) then I can't recommend https://draftable.com/compare enough. It's an amazing tool. Granted, you need to do merges manually with just a diff tool, but that's not usually the bottleneck.

Office comes with a spreadsheet diff tool since 2013 and I think there might be something like that for Word too.

There is. There is also 'diff' integration with the Tortoise range of tools also (i.e. TortoiseSVN, etc).

Re: Show HN: Version Control for Microsoft Word

#79

Post by TickleSteve »

torrent-of-ions wrote: post #20

How big do you think the intersection is of people who can use git and people who want to use Microsoft Word?

Significant.

Most engineering firms (web dev << the development world) have a need for proper documentation, and LibreOffice generally won't cut it either.

Re: Show HN: Version Control for Microsoft Word

#80

Post by TickleSteve »

thebiglebrewski wrote: post #65

I think if you can get people to use this and try it, you're going to make a ton of cash. This has been needed for years and doing it within Word sounds to me like the absolute best solution. Get in touch if I can help at all or you're raising!

Word has a diff tool built in. There is also integration with version control (i.e. double click in TortoiseSVN for example brings up a correct diff view of the word doc for 3-way merging).
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