More Robust Track Changes

[BrentFarese]

Currently, DOCXJS supports InsertedTextRun and DeletedTextRun, but there are many other ways to add track changes to a DOCX document. For instance, changes to paragraph spacing before/after, line spacing, changes to page margins, etc.

Are there plans to support the full list of track changes that Word supports? Aline would be interested in contributing to that work.

Has there been any talk of starting an Open Collective for contributions to sustain DOCXJS? It has worked well for some projects we use, like YJS.

[dolanmiu]

I am unsure, I have not contributed to the Track Changes work myself, probably a feature request

Yes, if Aline is able to contribute, that would be amazing

I have not heard of Open Collective before, but happy to take sponsorship via Github Sponsors

[BrentFarese]

Coming back to this thread @dolanmiu. Any further thought on the track changes work? Do you know who initially contributed the work to the library for what is supported now? Perhaps we'll try and get in touch with them and support more contributions to the library.

We've added support for exporting track changes that are supported by the library now, but we need more support for different change types.

Thanks!

[dolanmiu]

What sort of Change tracking would you wanted supported in docx?

The PR for the change tracking feature: #644

[BrentFarese]

What sort of Change tracking would you wanted supported in docx?

The PR for the change tracking feature: #644

The original PR supports things like rPrChange and inserted/deleted text, but there's a whole ton of other changes that are supported in Word. For instance, pPrChange for paragraph changes (paragraph alignment, spacing before/after paragraph), tcPrChange for changes to table cell properties, and so on. Basically any node in Word can have a PrChange (for properties change) that details changes to that node.

It would be great to support all changes, but it most likely would make sense to tackle the lowest-hanging fruit first that is most-likely to be used by the max amount of users (paragraph changes, page margin changes, etc.).

For Aline, this feature is extremely important since we're a legal app and legal users heavily rely on track changes.

@thojansen any interest in furthering your work on #644? Do you still contribute to open source?

We'd consider sponsoring work on this area @dolanmiu if you were interested in making DOCX.js even more advanced/full-features (it's already a great library BTW).

If we're unable to sponsor some work from anyone in the DOCX.js community, we'll likely tackle it ourselves but we're a bit resource constrained engineering-wise right now. As we staff up, we would put an engineer(s) on it for sure but would be great to tackle it sooner.

Thanks!

[thojansen]

Unfortunately I cannot contribute right now to further complete this. The old contribution was also for a legal app ;-).

[BrentFarese]

Unfortunately I cannot contribute right now to further complete this. The old contribution was also for a legal app ;-).

@thojansen got it. Do you do consulting work? We’d happily pay for the work and contribute it back to DOCX.JS and I saw maybe you do consulting work. If not no worries. Thx!

[BrentFarese]

@thojansen any interest?

[thojansen]

@BrentFarese Would love to help out, but I am unfortunately very busy right now as well. @Finkes is a very good friend of mine, I just chatted with him and he might be able to help you out here. I can guide him and help him get started if there is a need for that. You can find his email address on his GitHub profile to reach out.

[BrentFarese]

@BrentFarese Would love to help out, but I am unfortunately very busy right now as well. @Finkes is a very good friend of mine, I just chatted with him and he might be able to help you out here. I can guide him and help him get started if there is a need for that. You can find his email address on his GitHub profile to reach out.

Amazing @thojansen. Just pinged your colleague via email. Appreciate the reference.