skip to main content
10.1145/2723147.2723150acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesdocengConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Understanding Changes in n-way Merge: Use-cases and User Interface Demonstrations

Published: 16 September 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Several components are required to make a useful n-way merge system for documents. These include an engine to align the information in the documents and possible automated or rule based processing of the result. Another important aspect of the system is the user interface. Users need to be able to both understand the changes (which could include simple non-conflicting change) and also deal with any conflicts.
This paper discusses some prototype user-interfaces that have been developed in conjunction with an n-way merge product. The intention is to support the merging of XML based technical documentation formats such as DocBook[7], DITA[8] and JATS/NLM[3].
Users of merge systems could include software engineers who understand XML and its concepts of wellformedness and validity. However, these users are probably the exception to the norm and the majority of people involved in technical documentation may not understand XML. Existing merge interfaces do not suit these users and there is a need to create new interfaces that suit both n-way algorithms and also different user expectations and capabilities [6].
Prior to discussing the user interfaces it is necessary to understand the users and their backgrounds. They may have a different level of skill and user-interface expectation than users of merge systems designed for programming language code or data more generally. It is also useful to understand the existing user-interfaces used to describe change for two way comparison of documents and merge interfaces in general.

References

[1]
Doug Mahugh. Change Tracking in ODF. Blog posting retrieved 2014-08-13 from: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dmahugh/archive/2011/03/16/change-tracking-in-odf.aspx, 2011.
[2]
ECMA TC45. Office Open XML Formats (ECMA Standard 376), 4th edition. Available at: http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-376.htm, 2012.
[3]
JATS Standing Committee. ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2012, JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite (version 1.0). Available at: http://jats.nlm.nih.gov/index.html, 2012.
[4]
S. Khanna, K. Kunal, and B. C. Pierce. A formal investigation of diff3. In FSTTCS 2007: Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science, pages 485–496. Springer, 2007.
[5]
J. Munro. StarOffice 6.0 Lives Up to its Name. PCMAG. com, May, 23:1–3, 2002.
[6]
E. V. Munson. Collaborative authoring requires advanced change management. In DChanges, 2013.
[7]
W. Norman and R. L. Hamilton. DocBook 5: The Definitive Guide. O'Reilly Media, Inc., 19 October 2011.
[8]
OASIS DITA Technical Committee. Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Version 1.2. Available at: http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.2/os/spec/DITA1.2-spec.html, 2010.
[9]
OASIS ODF TC. Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) Version 1.2. Available at: http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/OpenDocument-v1.2.html, 2011.
[10]
OASIS Tables TC. XML Exchange Table Model Document Type Definition TR9901:1999. Available at: https://www.oasis-open.org/specs/tm9901.html, 1999.
[11]
W3C Change Community Group. http://www.w3.org/community/change/.
[12]
C. Wick. Knowledge management and leadership opportunities for technical communicators. Technical communication, 47(4):515–529, 2000.

Index Terms

  1. Understanding Changes in n-way Merge: Use-cases and User Interface Demonstrations

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Other conferences
    DChanges '14: Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on (Document) Changes: modeling, detection, storage and visualization
    September 2014
    38 pages
    ISBN:9781450329644
    DOI:10.1145/2723147
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 16 September 2014

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. XML
    2. change tracking
    3. document formats
    4. merge

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article
    • Research
    • Refereed limited

    Conference

    DChanges '14

    Acceptance Rates

    DChanges '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 7 of 9 submissions, 78%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 13 of 19 submissions, 68%

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • 0
      Total Citations
    • 59
      Total Downloads
    • Downloads (Last 12 months)0
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
    Reflects downloads up to 22 Jan 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Media

    Figures

    Other

    Tables

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media