The introduction of the flat file xml documents (fodt) allows us to use LibreOffice in our collaboration tools like github so we can collaboratively work on documents. This works great. The only problem is that comparing the changes done by others is still a hideous task. We can see the changes made between two fodt files by using diff, but this is still too cryptical. LibreOffice has the feature to compare offline documents. This tools also works great. My feature request is to make this compare feature also work with online documents. Ideally, LibreOffice should implement an extension for various versioning control tools like github in which we should be able to select the files and commits we want to compare. Or even comparing changes done in a feature request. A simpler implementation would be giving the user the option to select an online fodt file and comparing this to either a local file or another online file. This would allow us to select the raw view on github of two fodt files and seeing the changes in our local LibreOffice.
Is there a reason, why this should be a core extension? Why not hire someone to create the extension as non-core?
I'm not saying it should or shouldn't be a core extension. I also don't have the money to spend on hiring someone. Also, the LibreOffice wiki has a dedicated page explaining how it could be used in Version Control workflows. My enhancement request is merely meant to improve this functionality since fodt files were introduced and thereby increasing the possible audience of LibreOffice. For example, http://www.overleaf.com states that it's used by various companies and universities as a collaboration tool. I think, the feature i'm requesting could make LibreOffice a serious competitor for these collaboration websites, because it would then combine the powerfull live preview (offline) text editor with collaboration tools backened by sites as github, mercurial, bitbucket. I can also understand that implementing a compare documents for github, mercurial, cvs etc. might not be something of high priority for the LibreOffice team. That's why i requested a simple stripped down feature that could be really usefull as a core feature as well: Allowing us to use URL's as a possible input for the compare documents feature. This would also make it massively easier to keep track of changes in Version Controlled fodt projects.
Ok, I'll set to NEW, but if you want to see traction, I highly recommend you somehow rally support/money behind this idea :) After all, we have over 2000 enhancement requests.
Maybe a silly question, but it is difficult to implement the url input feature? I'm a skilled C developer so maybe with some guidance, i help implementing it.
(In reply to g3855563 from comment #4) > Maybe a silly question, but it is difficult to implement the url input > feature? I'm a skilled C developer so maybe with some guidance, i help > implementing it. I don't know as I'm only a "bugzilla janitor", but you can ask on the mailing list http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice or IRC http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=libreoffice-dev