This paper has been improved upon. If you would like to read the most up-to-date version, click here.
There are some pieces of software, and some formats, that are de-facto standards and have been around for decades. One of these is the diff3 format for representing changes and conflicts in text documents.
Diff3 works well for unstructured text documents that are divided into lines, but can we improve on diff3 without making it too complicated? Can the existing representation of changes and conflicts be extended to handle tree-based data? This paper seeks to answer these questions and to describe how further benefits can be enjoyed by using XML or JSON as the basis for showing conflicts and changes.
There is no doubt that the diff and diff3 format has established itself as a well-used de-facto standard. In our last paper on the subject, we suggested some minor improvements to diff3. We’ve improved upon those suggestions to propose an even better format.
JSON is now a widely used format for data both in web applications and more generally. However, systems and APIs that exchange JSON haven’t been able to take advantage of tracking tools. Can this be helped by processing JSON as XML?
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WHERE CHANGE MATTERS
From ISO Quality Services Ltd.
