"track changes" feature: show deleted text #5341

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1. milahu

   added

   Feature Request

   on Dec 30, 2021
2. webzwo0i commented on Dec 30, 2021

   

   webzwo0i

   on Dec 30, 2021 via email

   Last edited by webzwo0i

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   Sounds like a good idea, but we need to differentiate what (if anything) is needed in core to make this work and if this can be done as plugin or if it's really that helpful that we want to make this part of core. One problem, as you said, is session attribution: What is the best method to accomplish public pads while having some kind of pad ownership/rights management? ie the "moderator" clicks "track changes" but how does Etherpad know that it's the "moderator" who wants to "merge" the changes in? Obviously we can base the decision on express_sid, but this is not very user-friendly (ie user deletes cookies, user is in incognito mode, user changes browser etc). Naturally, we can give anybody the ability to use track/merge because every revision is stored, so any revision can be restored. In combination with some kind of "fork this pad with history" functionality (which is already possible via .etherpad export) this might be helpful. However, what problem/use case should be solved? - If we export a pad with a large garbage history due to vandalism, we don't want to import the garbage into the new fork. - If we fork due to vandalism, why would it matter to have a new pad id? In cases where a pad id is publicly available and we want to move to a new pad without making the id publicly available we already can do this. - Do we want to remove old revisions because they are vandalism? (This is something that probably won't go into core) Some kind of "revert revisions x1,x2,x3,x4..." functionality is something I would definitly want to support. I can imagine this to be very useful, but maybe as part of the timeslider, ie diffing two arbitrary revisions. But suppose the head revision is at 500 and you want to compare revision 300-400. Etherpad can't find out if the changes that are done between 300 and 400 are still "present" in revision 500. We can try to use line numbers and output all changes that are made to a specific line, but this is problematic (e.g. when line index changes)
3. milahu commented on Dec 30, 2021

   

   milahu

   on Dec 30, 2021

   Last edited by milahu

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   that escalated quickly ; )

   example scenario:

   lets say you and me work on a document.
   i'm a maintainer, you're a contributor.
   the document is hosted in a git repo,
   but development happens in etherpad (or similar collaborative editor).
   (i assume this way is more user-friendly than github pull-requests.)

   so ... you propose changes, i review your changes (accept/reject/modify)
   after some back-and-forth, we reach consensus,
   i commit the new version to git, the etherpad history can be deleted.
   (in other words, the million etherpad commits are squashed into one git commit.)

   im using matrix as transport layer for CRDT messages, see applications beyond chat
   the matrix element client can embed etherpad-lite as widget (video)

   public pads

   only matrix users have write access to the pad
   so the contributors are only "untrusted" but authenticated (less vandalism)
   access control is done by matrix -> ownership, write access

   Do we want to remove old revisions because they are vandalism?

   compare: rewrite git history. sometimes this is necessary to remove private data
4. ether

   deleted a comment from milahu on Jan 15, 2025
5. JohnMcLear commented on Apr 17, 2026

   

   JohnMcLear

   on Apr 17, 2026

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   Does https://www.npmjs.com/package/ep_timesliderdiff not solve this problem? If not, I'll re-open

   👍React with 👍1Reacted by milahu
6. JohnMcLear

   closed this as completedon Apr 17, 2026