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[Gretha <782406@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Christopher, I am attaching 3 documents which together illustrate
the comparison problem.

Version-1 is the original as submitted by the "author" to the "editor".
Version-2 is the final version after the editor has made some minor changes.
Version-1-to-2 is the result of LibreOffice Document Compare.

The changes made by the editor are as follows:

(1) one textual change ("so at" > "in order")
(2) two formatting changes ("essential" in bold and "refine it" in italics)
(3) split one long paragraph in three places for better readability

The editor has been a loyal user of OOo for over a decade.  During that
time, she has seen ample effort spent on changing the colour of the
icons, while the totally dysfunctional and unhelpful Document Compare
functionality has been left in the Stone Age.  Irked by this, she also
completely rewrites the footnote of the original version-1.

What help does Document Compare now offer her in identifying the changes
from version-1 to version-2?

First, a whole multicolour flap of text is identified by LibreOffice as
having been altered.  The main body of text (excluding the footnote) now
comprises 374 words.  Of these, LibreOffice marks 261 (70%) as changed
(inserted / deleted).  Yet, she changed only two words (0.5%), inserted
three paragraph splits (0.8%), and made two formatting changes (0.5%).

Second, the complete rewrite of the footnote, entirely changing both its
meaning and its formatting, is totally ignored by Document Compare.
LibreOffice does not flag any change whatsoever.  Thereby it actually
gives the totally false impression that, from version-1 to version-2,
the footnote has not been touched at all.

Now imagine, she does not have a one-page document as here, but a
50-page report or a 300-page book.

What help does LibreOffice give a writer, a collaborative group of
writers, or an editor when it comes to version control?  They are simply
swamped by massive swathes of text identified as having been altered,
when in fact there might well be only an occasional change here and
there.

And footnotes, so important for technical and other precise detail, are
simply skipped - and worse, skipped without warning - by LibreOffice's
Document Compare. (Perhaps the same holds true for other text,
formatting or graphical elements as well, I have not checked.)

The version comparison algorithm of LibreOffice is just lazy,
incompetent and misleading, and it simply offloads its task onto the
human editor.

We might as well go back to our old Triumph and Olivetti typewriters of
the 1970s.  This is also why, after more than 10 years of OpenOffice and
now LibreOffice, we still use Microsoft Office -- just for version
control.

It would seem a challenge relished by any good trainee programmer to
develop a competent file comparison algorithm for LibreOffice.  At
least, had I got the programming skills, I for one would love the
challenge to solve it.

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop
Packages, which is subscribed to libreoffice in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/782406

Title:
  LibreOffice Writer Document Compare (regression)

Status in “libreoffice” package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: libreoffice

  OpenOffice 3.2 Writer contained one major improvement over earlier
  versions, which had been overdue for years:  It offered for the first
  time the ability to fine-tune the options when comparing two documents
  (Edit > Compare Documents...).  This ability to select Document
  Compare options (via Tools > Options...) has now been dropped again in
  LibreOffice 3.3.2, installed with the Ubuntu upgrade to 11.04.

  Comparing two files has reverted to the old OOo behaviour of flagging
  entire long sequences of paragraphs as different, when in fact they
  are actually identical except maybe for just one or two minor
  typographical differences.

  The ability to compare documents efficiently is absolutely essential
  when editing long and complex documents in a production environment.

  Until OOo 3.2, the only real choice was to revert to Microsoft Office
  just for the purpose of document comparison and to let MS Word
  precisely detect the differences.  OOo 3.2 was the first real
  improvement here, but in LibreOffice we are now back to square one.

  Please bring back this essential key feature -- the code must still be
  there --, and hopefully, refine it further so at to detect any changes
  more precisely.

  Note:  Document Comparison also still does not work at all in
  footnotes.  Two documents with differences only in the text of
  footnotes are erroneously flagged as identical.

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