On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 7:18 AM, Chuck [via Asciidoctor :: Discussion] <[hidden email]> wrote:

(This started as an email to Dan Allen directly and at his suggestion I am posting this up for discussion to this group.)

TL;DR What is an easy way to incorporate the track changes functionality of MS Word to a plain text file writing process?

I'm hoping that you might have a reference or two on a matter that I've run into involving transitioning from writing docs in MS Word to plain text files, and using AsciiDoc markup in particular. I've yet to find anything written about this particular issue via internet searches (possibly due to poor queries).

In general, I have buy-in for making changes to our documentation process to go from our current method of writing/editing in MS Word to using AsciiDoc formatted files. As I'm mapping out the new process I'm having trouble coming up with a method to mimic a key piece of the process which is track changes. Seeing who changed what and, if applicable, with comments why. Keeping the process simple for non-technical people is important. They can be taught commands or things to do for processes but the easier the transition and methods the better.

So the simplified situation is as follows:

<writer > Thsi is the sentance that explains why it happens.
<editor1> This is the sentence that tells of why it occurs.
<writer > This is the sentence that explains why it occurs. //<writer >comment the word explains is important here because blah blah blah...
<editor2> This is the sentence that tells of why it occurs. //<editor2>comment the word tells is correct here because blah blah blah...

After editor2 passes the doc back to the writer, he can see the history of the discussion, see the changes by each user using track changes, and then accepts the verdict or kicks it back for more discussion. Then the person who does the final edit review before publishing has the entire history of edits and updates and accepts all the changes or asks questions from a new perspective.

The only idea I've been able to come up with is to continue the writing and editing in Word then save out what will be published to a text file. My concern is that I've read this can be problematic due to things Word might do to the resulting text file. (Is that true to your knowledge with using AD markup?) The big downside to this idea is if a minor edit is done it has to be done in the Word doc, exported, and handled each time to keep everything in sync. I'd rather just deal with text files to keep the process as simple as possible.

Thanks for your time,

Chuck

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