https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=125726
Ramona <[email protected]> changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CC| |[email protected] --- Comment #1 from Ramona <[email protected]> --- I have also encountered this issue with both the recent OpenOffice 4.1.1, and the older 4.1.0 version – on Windows XP, as on Mac OS X Yosemite (the issue is not configuration-dependent). The issue is: the result of using the “Compare Document” feature in its current implementation is quite confusing in the context of documents where the edited version has a similar content but a different layout, a different flow of text than the original version - as exemplified by Anton, the original reporter. Steps to reproduce 1. Take a document and an edited version of that document. Ensure the two docs have the same content but a different flow of text, the edited version including changes of the type: - line breaks - paragraphs split into multiple subsequent paragraphs or sentences - bullets inserted - additional commas inserted - extra space between two words in a sentence. 2. Open the edited document and then go to “Edit” -> “Compare Document...”. 3. Using the file selection dialog which appears, select the original document and confirm the dialog. Results OpenOffice combines both documents into the reviewer's doc. The fragments of text affected by the new formatting are marked as new insertions / deletions. Expected The OpenOffice “Help” on comparing documents specifies that: “All text passages that occur in the reviewer's document but not in the original are identified as having been inserted, and all text passages that got deleted by the reviewer are identified as deletions”. As the description suggests, the user expects that new content is marked as insertion, whereas no longer existing content is marked as deletion. The "Compare Document" feature, however, does not distinguish between semantic changes and formatting changes of the type mentioned above. Both are treated alike. Thus, passages or fragments of sentences marked as (new) insertions are old passages with new formatting or fragments now preceded by a (previously forgotten) comma. Similarly, passages marked as deletions are passages still included in the edited version but under a slightly different form. The user discovers that even a basic extra space inserted between two words in the edited version of the doc will lead to subsequent content (up to the punctuation mark) being marked as insertion / deletion. Please refer to the screen captures attached. Treating formal changes like semantic changes increases confusion and diminishes usability. I have discovered in the database two older reports that basically point out to the same issue, including unhappy comments from people for which this feature is essential to their (proofreading) work, and suggestions arising from comparisons with other similar products: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=49217 https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=54195 -- You are receiving this mail because: You are the assignee for the issue. You are watching all issue changes.
