office-collab — archive

Multiple changes

From: Svante Schubert <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2012 19:58:00 -0000

On 20.09.2012 15:26, Patrick Durusau wrote: Svante, On 09/20/2012 08:35 AM, Svante Schubert wrote: Hi Patrick, <snip> When forward progress of the text stops? When I stop deleting the inserted text? When the cursor has moved off the inserted text (after deletions/additions)? Or the cursor has left the inserted text for more than 5 seconds? After a save? Why shall we care? This is absolutely an implementation detail of the application, all we have to care about is that similar changes are able to be reflected by different set(s) of operations, which all have in common that they have the same information set, resulting in the end into an equal change. For instance, instead of three operations: insert a in paragraph 1 at position 1 insert b in paragraph 1 at position 2 insert c in paragraph 1 at position 3 The application might as well sent one operation: insert abc in paragraph 1 at position 1 AFAIK Google Docs is pushing every change right away to the server, like editing in a field using AJAX. We should care because we are *not* writing a protocol for interchange of change tracking information. I suggest we do not invest too much energies to focus on what we should *not* do, who has a benefit from that attitude? Focus on what we are able to archive for our goal of change-racking. To allow an ODF application to undo changes made by another ODF application has much to do of of the interchange of change information. But perhaps we are just again at cross-purposes.. We are writing a format to track changes in a file format for reading and presentation to a user (same or another user), post change. On the same or a different application. What is meant by: ..resulting in the end of an equal change? That the state of the document is the same. I perform the following operations: insert a in paragraph 1 at position 1 insert b in paragraph 1 at position 2 insert c in paragraph 1 at position 3 I move off that changed text and perform changes elsewhere. I return to the abc text, which shows change in my interface and: 4. delete c in paragraph 1 at position 3 Question: Is that reflected in the *markup syntax* that is saved as part of the document? Not being saved. I can rewrite a sentence a dozen times , in the end it is only saved the delta from the start and the end of the session. In other words the operations are being compressed to express the information set representing the session delta. Here is what I get with the latest version of OpenOffice: <text:change-start text:change-id= ct139634698526728 />ab<text:change-end text:change-id= ct139634698526728 /> The rest of the changes tracking: def in paragraph 2 at positions 1, 2, 3 ghi in paragraph 3 at positions 1, 2, 3 I conclude that changes to changes are not tracked in OpenOffice. Sure. That could be a *serious* failing if we are tracking changes by authors and a subsequent author can change my change and it still shows up as my change, albeit not as I changed it. No problem as far as I see... Hope you are having a great day! Same to you, Svante Patrick Changing the position pointer (start or end) may be part of a definition of change but it is a fairly crude one. Only if the position pointer is part of the document state to be changes, AFAIK OOo is saving it into the settings.xml properties. Otherwise I refer to the beginning of this mail, a change is reflected by an operation call upon the document. Hope you are having a great day! Patrick Hope you are having a great day as well! Svante On 09/20/2012 05:49 AM, Svante Schubert wrote: Hi Patrick, On 19.09.2012 17:04, Patrick Durusau wrote: Svante, On 09/19/2012 08:35 AM, Svante Schubert wrote: Hi Patrick, <snip> That is at what time does the state of the text become fixed so that change tracking is engaged again? With fixed you might as well think about a compression/condensation of operations. For example, if someone inserts a word and deletes it again, it will not occur in the CT, although there had been two operations. That was my question. You are presuming a model that does not track changes to changes. Might be philosophical, as every operation creates a new independent document state. Therefore two (or more) sequential operations changing the same data, could be interpreted either as two (or more) independent changes of the document state or as a change of a change. After realizing both views are equivalent it is much easier to work solely with the prior model, where each change is independent and movable along the sequence of operations (presuming to do the required OT adaption during movement, i.e. whenever passing a create/delete operation that influence the position of the moving operation de/increase the position integer). Which is one presumption but perhaps not the one that the TC desires to make. The TC is likely to favor the easiest and efficient model being offered. Can think of compression/condensation of operations but that means the CT syntax has to record multiple changes, say make bold and italic instead of separate operations of bold, then italic (on the same text). From a abstract high level view, changing the style on text is nothing more than an change of properties on a sequence of the document. Someone might change a single property or multiple properties. Latter might be done via operations by either passing all properties along or defining a set beforehand. Someone might even have the vision that some style sets are being defined before the operations occurs (to follow our convention over configuration approach), either within the document (as a given style set) or preferable within the ODF specification, by style blends from the application vendors. For instance, the heading 1 style set might be defined before hand, instead of passing the styles for every document being opened. Various compressions are thinkable, all they have to have in common is to keep the information set equivalent. And, it means we have to define when compression/condensation occurs and how it is recorded in syntax. Uncertain yet, if we have to be necessarily such strict. We definitely have to define what operations are equivalent. We could even come up with a normalized form of operations (the most efficient form of operations to be exchanged). Not objecting to your answer but it leaves out a lot of detail. ;-) Sure, just wanted to keep the mail short ;) Hope you are having a great day! Patrick Hope you are having a great day as well! Svante --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] -- Patrick Durusau [email protected] Former Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34 Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps) Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300 Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps) Another Word For It (blog): http://tm.durusau.net Homepage: http://www.durusau.net Twitter: patrickDurusau