[FirmwareBurner]

Word (offline) has had a built-in diff feature for over 10 years, and offline versioning is most likely handled like this: work_document_24_Dec_2023_Changes_from_William_final2-Copy(1).docx

But most likely collaboration is now done via SharePoint and the cloud version where you can track changes live.

[shabble]

maybe I'm just doing it wrong, but having looked at these capabilities occasionally, they seem pretty weak.

- There's no equivalent of "git blame" that I can find to see who/when a particular line/paragraph/section changed.

- I can't see if there's a way to view my changes separate from other edits to the document, or isolate changes by single authors generally.

- "diffing" via the "compare documents" action seems to want to generate a new document with track-changes edits for changes from old/new, but mangles the histories to present all changes as by the invoker of the diff, at that time, which isn't all that useful.

It's definitely better than nothing at all, but a long way short of where I'd hoped we'd be regarding collaborative document authoring at this point.

[ClumsyPilot]

I’m think your expectations are a bit unrealistic, in terms of complexity for an average office worker.

First of all, most developers can’t use git blame

Secondly, there hasn’t really been a good diffing / compare documents experience for complex documents, with images and tables. The experience we have with HTML occasionally breaks the document itself, it’s not suitable for an average office worker.

You have to keep in mind that the tools being complicated are a not just a training problem - every time I see a developer making a blog, they spend more time on the technology than on the content they want to write. That’s why I don’t host my blog, I need the tool to get out of the way so that I can think about the relevant issue - communication.

[shabble]

I don't think some sort of vaguely granular "last edited by XXX at YYY" annotations/tooltips/whatever would be too outrageous a feature to confuse everyone.

If necessary, could treat tables or other complicated compound entries as a single editable item, although given the mysterious passion everyone I've ever worked with seems to have for putting just about everything into a table regardless of need, I'd hope it could be granular to a cell-level, at least.

Trying to collaboratively write complicated documents with a bunch of inter-relations between sections, from different people (in my case, documentation & regulatory paperwork for medical devices) is a massive pain, and I feel like it's too obvious a problem to be confined to my particular niche.

I vaguely recall Word is widely used for preparing huge legal documents, where the content and stakes are probably similar, so maybe there are some solutions, unless they're just "throw interns at it".

[eptcyka]

I think you underestimate most developers.

[brnt]

Sharepoint is in-org, and lo and behold, that's not always, or not even usually how documents are formed.

Plus, Sharepoint still has no concept of concurrent editing, so you better hope that nobody works on the same document at the same time. Also, it doesn't track changes.

It is only better than a file on a Windows share by a hair. A very thin hair.

Word's diff is Not Great (tm), but yes, at least it's there. Have you tried using it with more than 1 other changeset?

[JonAtkinson]

These assertions are just not true. I'm working right now on a document with coworkers, concurrently, via a Sharepoint server. Change tracking is enabled and can even be enabled by default by the Sharepoint admin.

I share a lot of your sentiment about open formats in previous comments, but this is classic FUD and demonstrably wrong.

[brnt]

Then our Sharepoint server must have disabled sth. I regularly get a message on save that the document has changed meanwhile, with the option to overwrite those changes or discard my own...

No change tracking is visible to me, other than a timestamp and name of last edited.

FUD is isn't. Please don't use buzzword gratuitously, I know _a lot_ more about the deployment here than you. Also, you didn't counter the statement that it doesn't do concurrent editing (like Google Docs, OnlyOffice), which in 2024 is a major gap imho.

[JonAtkinson]

Your original comment was speaking in general terms, about all Sharepoint services. Not your specific deployment. Details matter or your argument falls down.

As for concurrency, read my comment again, I use the specific word.

[brnt]

If you see that I talk about a certain config of Sharepoint, it's much faster to point that out than being argumentative.

What did you do to have concurrent editing (or what did you not do), and how does it integrate the various diffs?

[szundi]

Forgot the _final_final2