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Tracked Changes: Navigating the Document-Format Anti-Pattern

Published: 16 September 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Editing of word-processing documents at the presentation level, with visible tracking of changes, operates at a different level of abstraction and granularity than the recorded form in common document-file formats. The consequent mismatches along with other limitations of standards for document-file formats present an anti-pattern that impedes reliable inter-product exchange of change-tracked documents. Analysis of the situation for ODF change-tracking reveals simple extensions and definitions that supplement the current specification without introducing any conflicts. Patterns of systematic testing for conformant document files, compliant processing, and verifiable interoperability are identified as essential prerequisites to dependable improvement of change-tracking in collaborative settings.

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  • (2014)Progress ReportProceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on (Document) Changes: modeling, detection, storage and visualization10.1145/2723147.2723156(1-4)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2014

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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 the author(s) 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].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 16 September 2014

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Author Tags

  1. OpenDocument
  2. WYSIWYG
  3. XML
  4. change tracking
  5. document formats
  6. over-lapping markup
  7. user conceptualization

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DChanges '14

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

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  • (2014)Progress ReportProceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on (Document) Changes: modeling, detection, storage and visualization10.1145/2723147.2723156(1-4)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2014

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