About track changes

[dragonauta]

I've been using novelWriter for two years.
I wrote two novels and some short stories.

My first novel is currently under review by a publishing house,
and I can't find a simple way to keep track of the changes i do.

What are you using?
A new Project Note seems too much and difficult for tracking changes.
I can't get used to "%Note" or "%comment" nor "%~".

I was looking for something similar to strikethrough,
but something that wouldn't appear when compiling the manuscript.

Something like: "run walk to me."
So "run" is still the original word but no visible when compiling the manuscript.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
(sorry for my english, I speak spanish)

[vkbo]

Hmm, good question. There isn't really a way to do this now other than using the %~ type comments. I've actually been thinking of ways to solve this myself, but I don't have a solution.

The underlying problem is that novelWriter is plain text. This was a deliberate choice of course, but it does come with some limitations, like this one. You can't really do fancy things with the text because it is just plain text. Stored as a plain text file. I've thought about adding a way to keep multiple version of each document, but that isn't trivial either. For people used to version control software, it is easy enough to use those to track changes in a novelWriter project using for instance git. But git is not easy to use for non-developers, although there are apps that do make it a little easier. It will let you see the changes though.

Feature #383 is about adding some way to do this inside the app. I'm thinking if letting the writer tag copies of the file, and then have a window or view to show the changes visually.

[dragonauta]

Thank you.
I've using "%Note (date) paragraph",
but it gets messy when you change just one word.

Now I'm giving a shoot to @Custom so I can keep track of changes in a different file, but with a quick reference.
I put original the paragraph and other notes there,
but I have to pay attention when naming (I'm using date format YYYYMMDDhhmm)

Again, thank you for this beautiful piece of software.

[vkbo]

Just thinking a little more about this problem.

I'm wondering if it would make sense to allow the user to put a root folder into a "revision" mode where you can put the cursor in a paragraph and press some key to record a new version of the same paragraph. It would then flag that paragraph as two different revisions, and let you select the revision when generating the manuscript.

I don't know if that is actually a user-friendly way of working. It needs some testing at least. But it does work with the plain text format. It could be done by prefixing a paragraph with a [rev:1] marker or something like that. Or maybe even just [r:1] to keep it short. Technically, since it's a shortcode, it could be used inside the text too. Like:

He started to [r:1]run[/r][r:2]walk[/r] towards me.

It's a little clunky for inline mode, but I could add a feature to auto-apply the shortcodes if you first select the text you want to replace, and then start typing. So when the revision mode is enabled, any attempt to edit the text triggers these wrappers. It saves you from having to type them or apply then with formatting buttons.

For this to work, the revision number needs to be set globally on the project perhaps. It could be done in Project Settings.

Not sure if this is a good idea, but it's at least an idea. 😄

[dragonauta]

This should work...
Normally, you simply write your novel.
Then you start editing it, and it happens: a perfect paragraph gets ruined, and you can't go back.
I mean, you can go back (immediately) using Ctrl+Z, but what if you change your mind later? (been there)
Since there is no revision history or change tracking, you can't recover what you originally wrote.

[vkbo]

Well, you can duplicate the novel folder, and keep you entire first draft there if you wish. I know people do that. It's actually why I added the duplicate feature in the first place.

[regelbruch]

I am also in the review process of my novel. Again. The shortcode idea sounds good to me. For me the change of single words doesn't need to be tracked. But I have to rewrite whole paragraphs and I also have to change a character's personality. Such changes I would love to track without using git, which is indeed a little complicated for such a project, I think.

As a side note @vkbo: I tried the duplication, btw. The documentation describes the process, and also mentions: "The duplicated build will have “2” appended to its name." BUT the duplicate is not named with an additional "2", it just has the exact same name as the original. I am also not sure whether it would be a good idea to make the changes is the duplicate.

[vkbo]

The docs may be outdated. But my point about the duplication was that you just duplicate the whole novel folder and label it "draft 1" or something like that as a copy before you start editing the other. That way you can view the two version of each document side by side.

In any case, I could test a changes tracking feature using shortcodes and maybe make a test release for it. I'm just a little afraid it will be complicated or clunky to use.

[regelbruch]

Thank you for this explanation about duplicating the novel.
Being able to visually see the diffs would of course be amazing.
But regarding this, the shortcode or any other additional function, I personally would not like to see Novelwriter become such a functionality monster as other authoring specific software. I rather have a simple tool and find my own way for specific problems.
I have not yet tried the %note nor the above mentioned 'at'custom feature and will have a look at this.

[regelbruch]

One more thing about the shortcode idea: perhaps it would be enough to just be able to enter it manually, and having NW ignoring specific shortcodes when rendering the output. For example, when using r1, r2 and r3, I would be able to define in the output settings that r1 and r2 shall be ignored. Maybe this would be less complicated to implement and also not blow up the software. But maybe I'm wrong because I am not a programmer and have no clue.

[vkbo]

One more thing about the shortcode idea: perhaps it would be enough to just be able to enter it manually, and having NW ignoring specific shortcodes when rendering the output. For example, when using r1, r2 and r3, I would be able to define in the output settings that r1 and r2 shall be ignored.

Yeah, that was the idea. I was also thinking about adding a toggle that sets the editor in a mode where all changes are additive only, so when you overwrite parts or whole of a paragraph it automatically duplicates it first and adds the revision tags. This would tie in well with the write-only mode too, which is a different feature request.

This is the part that needs testing to see how user friendly it is. As with most features in novelWriter, this would do nothing until you enable it, so it isn't really in the way of users that don't need it (yet).