KNOW HOW OpenOffice Revision Control
Keeping Control
Revision Control
in OpenOffice
Keeping on top of the amendments there will be a need to see who has otherwise anyone could turn the feature
added what text and where. off as the document winds its way from
made to your documents is an uphill
Without this ability to keep track of author to author.
additional text, you run the risk of dupli- Any changes to the document are
struggle unless you happen to have
cating, or worse, contradicting, your preserved and you can view them at any
co-authors work. Luckily, some office time by selecting the Show function
some sort of Revision Control to fall
packages like OpenOffice come with from the same Changes drop down
Revision Control built in, but the menu. When you are viewing these
back on. Luckily OpenOffice offers
functionality is less than obvious unless changes you will see that they are high-
you know exactly where the controls for lighted in the document.
just that.
this feature are and how best to make it By default, text which has been
BY COLIN MURPHY work for you in practice. deleted is crossed through while addi-
The key to using revision control in tional text will be underlined. The text
OpenOffice (and StarOffice obviously) is color also changes depending on who
the Changes control, which can be the author of that piece of text is.
hen I am sitting in front of the found in the Edit drop down menu. As the document is passed from person
computer waiting to work in From here you get to control how the to person, details of who made the
Wan office suite application I revision control will work for your changes and when they made them are
haven t got time to start reading online particular document. kept. Depending on the nature and extent
documentation, By selecting Edit / Changes / Record of the changes you are making you can
I need to get that invoice out or some you turn on the feature which will record save a new version of the document, con-
such similar job instead. Because of this any changes that are made to a docu- trols for which you can find in the File /
I am sure there are lots of neat features I ment, including additions and deletions. Versions& drop down menu. While you
am missing out on purely because I This setting is saved when you save the are saving this new version you even get
don t know they are there. actual document, so, if you start your the opportunity to add comments about
document off with this function turned the amendments you have made.
Revision Control
on it will stay in that state until turned
Keeping Control
Just one of the many features that can be off again.
so easily overlooked is that of Revision You may not want the feature turned Let us have a look at an example of
Control . Should a piece of text need to off, so you have the opportunity to a piece of text that is going between
be created by more than one person, protect this setting with a password, three people.
Figure 1: Amended text is highlighted Figure 2: Change viewing disabled
50 May 2003 www.linux-magazine.com
OpenOffice Revision Control KNOW HOW
Figure 4: A single OpenOffice file can hold multiple version of that docu-
Figure 3: This menu allows you to Accept or Reject changes ment, a little piece of history
Ben starts off the document by adding of unchanged text, say the removal of an which is clearly reflected by both the file
his first piece of text . Realizing that this erroneous comma. size and by things like the line and
document is going to go through changes Once the text has done the rounds, character count which you can find in
he selects the Record option before being amended along the way, decisions the Files / Properties& . menu.
saving the document. It s important to need to be made as to which changes to
Version Management
note that the file needs to be in a keep or not. This is where you get to
OpenOffice (or StarOffice) format for Accept or Reject Changes selected from Briefly mentioned previously, Version
revision control to work. Had Ben the option you can again find on the Management allows you to keep entire
received a plain text document it would Changes dropdown menu. versions of documents, but still held in
be necessary to save it first in an appro- Clicking on Accept or Reject brings one file. The controls for this can be
priate format. up a directory of changes that have yet to found in the Files / Versions& drop
The document is then passed on to be fixed, see Figure 3 for an example. down menu, see Figure 4.
Rachel who just adds a line of text. By double clicking on an entry in this By checking the Always save a version
Rebecca now gets to see the document menu the actual change will be high- on closing box a new version of the
and decides to amend the text which lighted. Changes to text which has document will be added to the file when
Rachel added and also to add a line of previously been amended are also listed you close it down. This is different to just
her own. in the Accept or Reject Change menu in saving the file, which, obviously, saves
a tree directory. This list can become the changes you have made, but less
Ringing the Changes
very long, and so to help you easily obviously, doesn t save them as a
In the Changes menu you can toggle navigate the changes, you can filter the version. It is the version saving that
whether or not to Show the changes in list by certain criteria, by date and time, allows you to add the comments to the
a text. Normally, if a text has been by Author or by type of amendment, range of saves that you have worked
changed and that change has been insertion or deletion. so hard at and might usefully want to
recorded then the Show feature will be Most usefully, you can also filter by search later on.
turned on. Comment. And with judicious use of this You can also open discrete versions of
If your document is going through lots feature and a little teamwork planning a document, allowing you to see how
of changes then all the change highlight- you can find changes very quickly. it was in a previous form. The Show
ing will make the document very button allows you to see the full
Filters
difficult to read, hence the ability to comment text, you re not limited to
switch it off, something you will be able There is a system of color coding just one line here. The Compare
to see in Figures 1 and 2. between the list of changes and how button allows you to view the differences
they might relate to any filtering criteria. between the version of the document
Viewing the Changes
If shown on the list in Black then that which is open and the highlighted
Even with the Change Viewing disabled change matches the filter and can also version.
you can still see who is responsible for a be changed. Blue entries are also found The file size is also heavily impacted
passage of text by hovering your cursor on the filter, but only as a subentry, an by having multiple versions stored,
over the piece you are interested in and amendment of a previous change. hence the Delete key, which should
you will find that a balloon pops up With the help of your Shift and Ctrl be called upon when previous versions
telling you who and when that text was keys you can make multiple selections are no longer of interest. As an example,
changed. This is true also for the high- which you can then Accept or Reject en the file shown here, still containing the
lighted version of the text. masse. Alternatively, you can Accept or 3 versions and multiple amendments
Along the left hand edge of the text Reject All changes with one click. was 18.9KB long. Once the old versions
in Figure 1 you will also notice a bar. Once you have Accepted (or Rejected) had been deleted and the amendments
This is yet another form of highligh- an amendment it is then fixed to the accepted, the file size dropped to
ting, showing you that something has document and it s history is removed. Up 9.7KB still a big file for 3 lines of
changed on this line. This is very helpful until this point all of the changes are text, but then that s the price you pay
in locating small changes in a large block held within the document, something for functionality. %
www.linux-magazine.com May 2003 51
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