How can I do "track changes" stuff without using Microsoft Word?

December 8, 2005 9:40 PM

How can I do "track changes" stuff without using Microsoft Word?

I use Nisus Writer Express (A word processor for OS X). My boss and everyone else in the world uses Word, of course. Both programs speak rtf, of course, so that's mostly fine, except that we're currently writing stuff that's going through multiple revisions. Instead of just printing out my manuscript and scrawling on it in red pen like he used to, my boss has just learnt how to annotate my writings with the "track changes" thing in Word. When he sends me the rtf document back, it's pretty hard to find the changes. What I do is this: copy the original and revised documents and paste into Textwrangler, and use the 'compare' function in that. It's clunky, annoying and inconvenient, because Textwrangler just sees each paragraph as a line and lists lines that are different. And I have to work on plain text copies of the documents.
Is there a more elegant way to compare two rtf documents? Bonus points for something that specifically understands Word's change-tracking feature.

posted by nowonmai to computers & internet (11 comments total)

Hrm. Well. You could always run them through the Unix program diff to display changes between versions. But this will provide none of the features you probably want: one-click accept/reject, etc. Actually, as I re-read your question, you definitely want more than simple difference-finding. I don't believe that Word's "track changes" feature obeys any standards or is inter-operable with anything else. Sorry.

I'm pretty sure that if the document you're getting back contains your boss' changes tracked by Word, then it is no longer really an RTF file. RTF is a non-Microsoft format and I do not believe that it supports this functionality. It sounds like you are doing the responsible thing: outputting a cross-platform format. Your boss is not returning the favor.

I'd need to see exactly what you're seeing to say for sure, but I think you need Word to interact with this person.
posted by scarabic at 9:48 PM on December 8, 2005

I could be totally wrong. There may be a program out there for just your purpose. I would start with the Nisus website and see if they have a plug-in or anything of the sort.
posted by scarabic at 9:49 PM on December 8, 2005

OpenOffice.org has similar functionality (at least the XP version does) and it generally plays well with .doc files. Perhaps you could switch to that.

If you could say more about why you use Nisus instead of MS Office, you might get a better response.
posted by oddman at 9:55 PM on December 8, 2005

Openoffice does understand Word's changes-tracking, as far as I know. Because it's free, you can give a try. It may also be of assistance in converting to/from Word's own format.
posted by wzcx at 9:58 PM on December 8, 2005

You don't want to use a line-based diff, you need something like wdiff.
posted by Rhomboid at 10:11 PM on December 8, 2005

You know, you could use the free service WriteBoard, by 37 Signals. It's web based, supports multiple authors, basic (and some advanced) formatting and a complete revisioning system. It shows you who made what changes and when and tracks everything.

Also, it's password protected and, again, web-based. No files to send to each other. No software required, but a browser.
posted by disillusioned at 10:27 PM on December 8, 2005

Openoffice does understand Word's changes-tracking, as far as I know.

I can confirm that it does work. I have used OpenOffice's track changes feature when editing business documents and there were no complaints from the MS Office lovin' fools on the other end.
posted by deadfather at 11:17 PM on December 8, 2005

Backing up OpenOffice as well, although for situations like this, I have found Writeboard to be a great option.
posted by BigBrownBear at 3:20 AM on December 9, 2005

Other alternative web-based tools to help you write collaboratively: Writely, JotSpot, Foopad. These will allow you and your boss to edit pages simultaneously without having to worry about file formats, latest versions etc.
posted by blag at 4:13 AM on December 9, 2005

I just used OppenOffice's track changes feature on a word file the other day and the only thing that it a bit clunky is the commenting... actually, I couldn't figure out how to make it insert comments like Word does, so I just wrote them in the text YELLING so the author would know. She didn't seem to mind too much.
posted by sablazo at 6:30 AM on December 9, 2005

Thanks for your help, everyone. I thought that OpenOffice would be the best answer, but on installing version 2.0 it I discovered that it reliably crashes on opening the document I want to work on. NeoOffice/J will open the document, although it changes the fonts for some reason. But now I have at least discovered that, as I should have guessed, change-tracking doesn't work in rtf documents.

I think my solution will be to save a copy of the file in Word format, send it to the boss and hunt down the revisions in NeoOffice. I want to keep my versions of things in rtf though because Nisus is more pleasant to use and Endnote reads rtf nicely.

My reasons for not using Word are partly financial, partly religious and partly because I hate it hate it hate it. OpenOffice seems to suffer from copying MS Office too slavishly. NeoOffice, for instance, installs with options like "change what I just typed without telling me" and "annoy me by guessing what I'm about to type all the time" switched on by default.

I tried diff before posting my question and it was useless. Thanks for making me aware of wdiff; if I had the developer tools and Fink installed on this machine I'd give it a try, but I strongly suspect that I'd still have to convert documents to plain text first and would still have work to do to relate the output file to the original documents.

Web 2.0 collaborative tools are right out - I'm not about to try to teach the old boss new tricks.
posted by nowonmai at 9:12 AM on December 9, 2005