[mark212]

I'll answer some of these questions for the developer, because I'm smack in the middle of their target market: litigation attorney.

Anything other than Word is a non-starter for 99% of law firms (and the other 1% is still on WordPerfect). Markdown is awesome and I use it for my notes files and all kinds of things but contracts, settlement docs, pleadings, motions, etc etc all exist strictly and only in Word. And probably 50% of those are still .doc format, which was left behind more than a decade ago in Word 2007.

This product, if it works, will be a God-send for firms like mine (small to medium litigation shops that don't use full document assembly software with built-in version control like the AmLaw 100 firms. And it looks like even those firms might profit from this solution if it plays well with their customer style sheets and macros.

I wish it were different, but sadly the state of legal tech is mired in the late '90s.

[nylnd]

Another lawyer here (tax, UK) - there are similar products available and they're pretty commonly-used over here (such as Worksite for DKMS/version control and Workshare for comparisons between docs).

But the VC tends to be centralised, rather than distributed. I've often hankered after a more git-like experience when working remotely or offline, and I will follow this project with interest.

One area that is underserved at the moment is diffing .ppt files. Since a lot of the tax industry in particular uses PowerPoint for step plans and structure papers (because it is generally easier to build structure charts). Whilst it isn't the right tool for the job, for as long as people continue to use it, getting this working on your app would be huge.

[asr]

I'm pretty sure the latest version of worksite/workshare (never was sure which is which or what all the names are) can diff PPT files; apologies if I'm misremembering but that is my recollection from my firm.

I agree the developer needs to take a look at these if he/she has not already but there's plenty of room to improve on those products; I don't think the existence of some mediocre solutions should put the developer off.