zim-wiki team mailing list archive

[Jaap Karssenberg <jaap.karssenberg@xxxxxxxxx>]

JK,

Main problem I see is how you going to store all that meta-data in a wiki
format. If you really want to timestamp a change of e.g. 2 words half way a
paragraph you end up with timestamps every other word in your source text.

So you would have to keep a file next to the actual source to track changes
as they happen. Kind of keeping a permanent record of the undo stack. Not
too hard to hack together if you trigger it to update on each auto-save.
Bonus is that you would also get permanent undo. Only technical tid-bit is
that our real undo-stack is in terms of positions in the text buffer, which
does not match positions in the source text, so some glue is needed there.

Alternative would be to store patches and figure out history from that.
Most version control system have an "annotated" mode to show history of
text, but those are usually per line, not per word. You could figure out
though history per word from the version history. You would have to commit
for every other change though, so probably not for your purpose.

So in conclusion:
1/ Write a plugin that takes a diff of the text in the source file on each
auto-save and stores the deltas timestamped in a record next to the actual
source file.
2/ Connect it to the undo stack, so even after closing a page, you can
still undo/redo each delta
3/ Figure out what representation of this data you would want in the user
interface - e.g. text annotation, change log, ...

Regards,

Jaap



On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 10:53 AM, NorfCran <norfcran@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>  Hi Jaap and other contributors,
> it has been some time, since I worked on a project, which researched
> capabilities of synchronizing text with time (to extent of timestamped
> words). Actually I wanted to bring this feature to ZIM, but could not get
> there (the project in my case tries to use tree data structure algorithm to
> solve this issue with respect to timestamps). Anyhow, recently I came up to
> the following application, which inspired me to write this email:
> https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/armadillo-audio-notes/id532223938?mt=12
> It basically provides, what I would personally love to see in ZIM as well
> (apart of the audio, that is another level). Can you see any possibility to
> target this feature? I am personally very much into idea of time based text
> and possibly other users may start to see advantages of it (so there would
> be chance to track changes based on time through hierarchy of pages,
> especially when some words in long paragraphs change, it is difficult to
> use VCS). This is actually the main inspiration of this feature:
> http://etherpad.org/
> I would be interested in your opinions whether you see some possibility in
> implementing time based text plugin (basically directions of further focus)?
> Thank you for your feedback, best regards, JK
>