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When writing documents it can be important to have a track-changes file available for reviewers. Non-technical reviewers are used to Microsoft Word's track changes feature, where the additions/deletions/modifications are marked up in the working file. I can't find a way to create an equivalent change markup file when working with text-based files such as Markdown or AsciiDoc. Text compare applications, such as Araxis Merge, create various types of report files but nothing like Word's track changes. Is there a way to do this?

Thank you!

markbez
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1 Answers1

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In git, the git diff command will produce comparisons between different commits (i.e. recorded moments in time), different branches of the same code base, and even the differences between two separate files. git merge allows for interactively merging 'conflicting' versions of a document. Very powerful, but nothing like 'track changes' in terms of user interface.

Until you refine your question to a specific piece of software, you may have better luck posting to Software Recommendations. The more detail you can include on your specific needs (user base, interface, specific features, etc), the better a reception you'll get there.

Chris Keefe
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  • Thanks for your help, @Chris. I did explore git diff after posting my question. While I can create a diff on the commandline and in Git GUI with character level differences that are similar to Word's track changes, there doesn't seem to be a way to make a file with the changes that can be shared with others. I'd like to be able to make a PDF or other file that I can email to someone to show the differences. When I use git diff --color-words=. > result.diff, the result has codes that need an interpreter to display the colors. How can I make a PDF that shows the color coding? – markbez Feb 14 '19 at 06:27
  • @markbez, I don't have a PDF solution for you, but this thread covers [converting diffs to HTML files](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2013091/coloured-git-diff-to-html). Good luck! – Chris Keefe Feb 14 '19 at 22:41
  • Thanks @Chris! Your link gave me what I needed. I used ANSIFilter to create a change markup HTML file, which I can then convert to PDF. Once I worked out how ANSI escape codes work, I found I can just use find and replace in Sublime text to convert the escape codes to HTML span tags with CSS styling, and surrounded with +++ for passthrough in the AsciiDoc file. It's fast enough to do and creates a perfect output for revieweres. – markbez Feb 16 '19 at 22:28