[pmwiki-users] RFC: Page History & Word-level diffs

[Daniel Roesler]

I agree that the history should default to source-text view.

I also agree that word-level diffs are enormously valuable and should
be enabled by default.

Avast!
Daniel Roesler
diafygi at gmail.com

On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 12:00 PM,  <pmwiki-users-request at pmichaud.com> wrote:
> Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:34:04 +0100
> From: Petko Yotov <5ko at 5ko.fr>
> Subject: [pmwiki-users] RFC: Page History & Word-level diffs
> To: pmwiki-users at pmichaud.com
> Message-ID: <201002180034.04205.5ko at 5ko.fr>
> Content-Type: Text/Plain;  charset="us-ascii"
>
> Hello. I'd like to request some comments from the community about two changes
> of the default layout in a page history.
>
> When authors click on the "History" link, they see the differences between
> page versions with mostly[1] rendered output, ie. '''bold''' is rendered as
> bold text, a line starting with "!!" is rendered as a heading, [[#anchors]]
> are not visible, etc.
>
> To see the differences in the source-wiki-text, authors need to click on the
> link "Show changes to markup". It shows then the complete changes in plain
> text.
>
> I'd like to read your comments on changing the default page history to show
> the changes on the source-wiki-text instead of the rendered HTML.
>
> There will of course be an easy way to revert to the previous way, by editing
> config.php, or by clicking on the link "Show changes to output".
>
> I believe authors understand wiki markup and there is no problem for them to
> look at the source changes -- and it is actually better/easier to understand
> what happened (and an opportunity to practice for unfrequent editors). Other
> wiki engines (Mediawiki/Wikipedia) show only changes to the source-text.
>
> My second question is about the new word-level difference highlighting --
> should it be enabled by default?
>
> Admins could of course switch back to plain text, by editing config.php.
>
> Now it isn't default enabled, and an admin needs to edit config.php. To me,
> word-level diffs are absolutely valuable[2] and an awesome help when reviewing
> page changes. I don't see any good reason *not* to enable this for most wikis,
> but I'd like to know what people from the community think.
>
> It should be noted that word-level diff highlighting can only work in "source
> mode", not in rendered HTML output, that's why I'm asking the first question.
>
> Thanks,
> Petko
>
> [1] Mostly: external links are displayed as plain text, and (:directives:) are
> not processed.
> [2] Great thanks to Anno who maintains the InlineDiff recipe, and to others
> who suggested improvements.