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.docx is just an archive format. If I remember correctly the contents inside the .docx archive are plain text. Can’t we just use version control inside of there? We would have to of course figure out a way to have git unpack and pack the archive each time.
You can rename the .docx as .zip, and it unzips into .doc (xml) and folders full of images, etc. (same for .pptx, .xlsx, .etcx)
https://github.com/TomasHubelbauer/modern-office-git-diff
I've made this script which automatically extracts the Office file format (which is a ZIP archive of XML documents) and versions the XML documents and their extracted text contents alongside the binary Office file. This is done using a Git hook and it seems to work pretty well. If you're in need of versioning Office documents, this might be a good enough solution for you.
Edit: I should also address why not use the built-in Office versioning feature? The reason I don't use it is because I like to be able to view the diffs in Git. I don't want to have to use Office just to see the changes. My solution offers that. By doubling-up the way the original is versioned in the way of tracking the extracted XML and text contents as well, each commit's diff will have the binary change as well as the textual diff which in my experience is good enough to tell the gist of changes. And you're using standard Git / text manipulation tools you would use with any other diff.
My SaaS deals primarily with legal documents that for years had been maintained with Word. The pain of emailing documents is real, but the comfort level with how Word works is also real. Over the years, most organizations have developed internal workflows to share and send documents around that bypass the pains, and while they may not be perfect, they work. The funny thing is that the document authors like these ways…
Having a lot of experience in both legal (academic and lawyer) and tech (developer and founder), I totally agree with you and think you framed very well the situation. As a lawyer I can full confirm that our industry works as you have described (as regards documents workflows), and with my tech background I can also confirm that most features of dev-oriented solutions like git are mostly uninteresting from a lawyer's…
m@replace-with-my-username.com
.docx is just an archive format. If I remember correctly the contents inside the .docx archive are plain text. Can’t we just use version control inside of there? We would have to of course figure out a way to have git unpack and pack the archive each time.
However, diff on word xml is perfect tool to understand how the microsoft interprets the spec.
I gave up using Word to write manuscripts when I switched to Markdown documents in git. In the last few months, though, I gave up on Markdown to switch to a more robust format - LaTeX. Before I switched, I didn't know LaTeX at all, but I knew from my reading that it had the features I needed.
I'd say RST is suitable for many types of documentation but I'm not convinced that it's suitable for conference/workshop submissions.
Given this line, I think it's fair to add (2014) to the title.
This is pretty old news by now :)
Word is expensive, proprietary and the XML it generates is unfathomable. There are so many better FOSS tools and systems that we could be using. If you're collaborating on a document then markdown or LaTeX has you covered. You get version control though git and multiple people can contribute. If you're writing a book or article, then the graphic designers and typesetters are going to make the design decisions, not the author, so why bother messing around with fonts and colours and the infuriating placement of images and tables.
I authored a kid's book on coding, and the process was a nightmare. I authored in markdown, used pandoc to convert and then further edited in libreoffice, to be able to send stuff through in docx format. Then revisions were sent back in docx and I had to reverse the whole process, so I could maintain my plain-text version of the book. Then the proofs were sent through as PDFs, which I then had to markup for corrections. Many of the mistakes were due to the crappy way Word places images. In the end I just bought a copy of Word, and submitted to the way my publisher wanted me to work, which disrupted the authorial process.
It's time we ditched Word, in the same way we ditched VHS and DVD. It's an outdated technology that remains dominant just because everyone uses it at school, and then refuses to move on. If schools insisted that all homework was submitted in something like markdown, we'd see a dramatic change in a very short period of time. (BTW when I was teaching CS, my kids authored in markdown and submitted on GitHub)
Right, rant over - but I've been talking about this for years -http://coding2learn.org/blog/2014/04/14/please-stop-sending-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks! It is, it's quite hard to highlight exactly what changed regarding formatting and we found our users mostly cared about content changes. Having said that, adding an option to include formatting changes is on our roadmap.
Can an attacker use a formatting change to alter the sense of a document? Eg. make the text color the same as the background color or invisibly small?
I really don't understand how Word remains so popular. It was created at a time when few people had internet access, and was designed to produce printed documents. It was the perfect tool to write newsletters, flyers, articles, academic papers and manuscripts. The world has moved on though, and I fail to see Word's relevance today, other than the sheer number of people that are familiar with it. Word is expensive, pr…
These are not WYSIWYG solutions which answers 99% of your question "why". When people want to write a document they want to write things and have the things appear on a page, possibly in different formatting. Injecting ideas like source files, rendering pipeline, etc. will just result in confused people.
That's why online solutions like Google docs are popular. No special app, things look like expected, you can collaborate, and few people actually need any fancy features.