[pmwiki-users] RFC: Page History & Word-level diffs

[DaveG]

On 2/17/2010 6:34 PM, Petko Yotov wrote:
> Hello. I'd like to request some comments from the community about two changes
> of the default layout in a page history.
>
> When authors click on the "History" link, they see the differences between
> page versions with mostly[1] rendered output, ie. '''bold''' is rendered as
> bold text, a line starting with "!!" is rendered as a heading, [[#anchors]]
> are not visible, etc.
>
> To see the differences in the source-wiki-text, authors need to click on the
> link "Show changes to markup". It shows then the complete changes in plain
> text.
>
> I'd like to read your comments on changing the default page history to show
> the changes on the source-wiki-text instead of the rendered HTML.
>
> There will of course be an easy way to revert to the previous way, by editing
> config.php, or by clicking on the link "Show changes to output".
>
> I believe authors understand wiki markup and there is no problem for them to
> look at the source changes -- and it is actually better/easier to understand
> what happened (and an opportunity to practice for unfrequent editors). Other
> wiki engines (Mediawiki/Wikipedia) show only changes to the source-text.
>
> My second question is about the new word-level difference highlighting --
> should it be enabled by default?
>
> Admins could of course switch back to plain text, by editing config.php.
>
> Now it isn't default enabled, and an admin needs to edit config.php. To me,
> word-level diffs are absolutely valuable[2] and an awesome help when reviewing
> page changes. I don't see any good reason *not* to enable this for most wikis,
> but I'd like to know what people from the community think.
>
> It should be noted that word-level diff highlighting can only work in "source
> mode", not in rendered HTML output, that's why I'm asking the first question.
I think both changes are good ideas. I rarely find the default HTML view 
useful, and usually switch to PmWiki view. I also enable InlineDiff on 
all my wikis, as this is considerably more useful than the old PmWiki way.

I guess the real question is why would we *not* do this? I'm not really 
seeing any downside.

  ~ ~ Dave