RE: Problem with using SVN wih docx files

On my (out of the box) installation of TortoiseSvn the extension-specific configuration for Word files calls Word itself to do the differences. It displays a set of windows showing all the differences and both original files.

Any diff utility that doesn't know how to do this, such as Tortoise's built-in one, will not show anything useful.

An attempt at patch generation is also unlikely to understand the format and may generate binary differences, which may be technically correct but are unlikely to be what you want, and will in general not appear to be the text you are expecting to see in the files.

The characters being described as "crappy" are binary data which is what all MS Office files contain.

Regards,

Richard.

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________________________________
From: Michael Schlenker [michael.schlenker_at_contact-software.com]
Sent: 23 February 2015 18:10
To: users_at_tortoisesvn.tigris.org
Subject: Re: Problem with using SVN wih docx files

Am 23.02.2015 um 18:57 schrieb Mahmood N:
> Hello,
> I am using TortoiseSVN and have successfully worked with text files for an creating revisions for an academic paper.
> Now I am trying to use it with a word document. I have created a repository and added a single docx file in the trunk folder. Then I follow these steps:
>
> 1- commit the empty docx
> 2- add a sentence and save
> 3- commit
> 4- add another sentence and save
> 5- commit
>
> Then I open the "show log" and select the two revisions and select "show differences as unified diff". But the opened window contains crappy character which means it didn't compare the texts inside the docx file.
>
> Is there any way to fix that? Am I missing something?

Fix: Not really, in theory maybe.

Yes. You miss something.
Binary files produce crappy diffs. docx is a binary format.

If you had a proper toolchain (a svn compatible patch/diff tool for docx
that understands the format) it could be made to work, but there is no
such tool. Word has its own tools to do diffs and revisions, you might
be better off using that.

Michael

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