Suggestions on track control for markdown

[chetbaker]

Hello folks,

I would like to know if any of you have thoughts/developments/ideas to sort out one of the critical issues I'm having in a team not using Google Docs: track changes.

When you are using markdown plain text files -say, using NextCloud-, is there any way to see the differences between 2 recently changed files? I'm thinking more or less in the same way Etherpad shows changes. Example: John and Barry are editing a markdown file. Barry just changed a lot of things and how John would like to see the changes within the document.

Do you have any thoughts on how to solve this?

[mehdi]

@chetbaker If you're using exclusively markdown files, I would wholeheartedly recommend using good old Git. Yes, it may be a bit less UX-focused, but it's by far the best way to track changes in text files.

[chetbaker]

@mehdi thanks about that. The thing is my user case is not tech oriented. So, implementing a git based version control doesn’t seem very realistic to me.

I looked for git apps on Nextcloud and no luck either.

[murgero]

@chetbaker

You wont get version control like that in nextcloud I don't think but these apps (in the cloudron app store) can do what you want:

• bookstack
• hedgedoc
• wiki.js
• mediawiki
• dokuwiki
• jingo
• gitlab
• gitea
• gogs

I probably missed one or two but this should be the bulk - and some of these apps may have Nextcloud add-ons you can install, though a google search may be required for that.

[fbartels]

@murgero said in Suggestions on track control for markdown:

mediawiki
dokuwiki

At least these two use their own markup language however.

I've been using Hedgedoc for quite a while, and also with a fair amount of non-technical people and most seem to sadly struggle with it (I always need to explain to them how to switch from the "share" mode to the editing mode). Apart from that its pretty much like Etherpad, which also comes with the downside that its a collection of single pages and not a structured document storage like a wiki (or even a folder structure like in Nextcloud).

I would therefore recommend to look more into the wiki like recommendations, even if it means you're loosing same time editing.

[chetbaker]

@fbartels Yeah, that's exactly the same situation I had using Hedgedoc. It's a great tool, but not having a way to connect with a shared folder on Nextcloud makes whatever document you are working in an isolated thing.

[jdaviescoates]

@chetbaker said in Suggestions on track control for markdown:

I would like to know if any of you have thoughts/developments/ideas to sort out one of the critical issues I'm having in a team not using Google Docs: track changes.

Do you have any thoughts on how to solve this?

It's not markdown, but you can track changes in ONLYOFFICE docs:

Youtube Video