Access from oXygen XML Editor
The DeltaXML oXygen Plugin is available directly within the editor from menu items, which are automatically added by the plugin. You can choose the type of comparison and result you need by selecting one of the options, and then configure it according to your requirements.
With the DeltaXML oXygen Plugin you no longer need to remember to 'track changes' in order to see what you have changed, and to have the chance to accept or reject the changes. You can compare any two versions of your document to see what has changed.
DeltaXML oXygen Plugin complements the existing 'Compare Files' option in oXygen - it does not replace it. 'Compare Files' is good for line-by-line changes to XML files, whereas DeltaXML oXygen Plugin is intended to compare only the text portions of a document and the results must be viewed in Author mode.
Use for 'Tracked Changes' and 'Revision Tracking'
You can use the DeltaXML oXygen Plugin to generate 'Tracked Changes' or to insert revision markers in DITA and DocBook documents. Here is a brief description of when each of these will be useful to you.
Tracked Changes - tracking changes to review and accept/reject
The oXygen XML Editor has the ability to 'track changes' as you are editing a document in oXygen's Author mode. This is useful in that you can undo any particular change or ask another person to accept or reject changes. It is necessary to have the tracked changes switched on for the changes to be recorded, and if you forget to do this then you cannot see or accept/reject the changes.
Here is an example of when this is useful. You need to know what the changes are in your XML document, but you forgot to switch on 'track changes'. What do you do? Comparing your original and new version as XML throws up lots of changes you do not want to see. What you wish for is a 'Compare Documents' feature available in most office software applications. This is what the DeltaXML oXygen Plugin gives you.
These tracked changes are good to review and to accept/reject changes but are typically not shown up in a published document, i.e. you do not see the changes when you generate XHTML or PDF from your XML document.
Revision Tracking - showing changes in your published document
Perhaps you need to ask a colleague to do final quality checking on your DITA
document to ensure that all the updates have been made. But your colleague wants
to see the changes since the last edition, not read it all through again.
Ideally you want to publish your DITA document to PDF with all the changes
marked, but this means you need rev and status
attributes in your document, but it is almost impossible to put those in by
hand. The DeltaXML oXygen Plugin can now do this for you from within your oXygen
editor.
To show changes in a published document, your publishing pipeline needs to understand the changes and mark them up in the HTML or PDF output. To achieve this, you need to set the correct attributes in your source document. You could do this manually in the editor - but that is really very hard work! It is much easier, faster and more accurate to use DeltaXML oXygen Plugin to do this for you, and it works whether you are using DITA or DocBook.
Shows changes to text and tables
DeltaXML oXygen Plugin is optimised for handling text and tables intelligently. It gives you text comparison facilities that are similar to those in ordinary word-processing office software - but it provides this in the context of structured XML documents.