[be] [task #7972] feature request for GoogleDocs export and change integration

[Phil Fields]

Follow-up Comment #5, task #7972 (project bibledit):

Teus,
Thanks. I got your e-mail when I had just sent this message to you:

Hi Teus,

This is to comment on the request for an Import/Compare Tool by Wolfgang,
and also to modify my old request about Wiki integration that I don't find on
the list.

I am also trying to think of something that could be useful to the whole
community of BE users, not just to our project.

If you see the screenshot that I have attached, you will see that I have the
same passage up in both our GoogleDoc page and in BE. I daily need to compare
the earlier version in BE with the current version in the document file. I
would think that a lot of people need this. Let's say a translator sends off a
chapter in a word processing document or plain text document, and someone has
made changes. (without using the revision tracking in the word processor)

So what we need is a routine that would alternate between BE and another
editor program, that would simply go down the file and compare the text. I'm
sure you have seen programs that compare differences in source code for
programming, where the program will show before and after comparisons side by
side and color coded. It would be nice to have that kind of display on a verse
by verse basis. HOWEVER, at this point, I would be very happy to have just a
“dumb” comparison program, where the routine would simply stop whenever it
found a difference, with the cursor placed at the point of difference in each
file. The comparison program would need to have some options as to what
characters to ignore. The user might want to ignore instances of two spaces
together in the word processing document, and of course word processor
formatting codes would be ignored when comparing with BE. In BE, the
comparison could optionally ignore underlying USFM markers like v, if those
were not in the word processing document. For a dumb comparison like this, we
would need to be able to stop and start it easily via a hot key.

Specifically for our GoogleDocs, it would be nice if the dumb comparison
routine would know that it should go down a single column, rather than moving
by rows. The program would not need to be able to find the correct column. It
would just work wherever the user placed the cursor and started the
comparison.

Our footnotes would be a problem. The dumb comparison routine would have to
be restarted to check any footnotes, and footnote checking would have to be
done one at a time. But still, I would catch many more mistakes than when I
try to compare visually.

Thanks for considering this. I am currently collaborating with seven team
members.
Phil


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