Feedback on DiffWordByWordAddOn

-- FredericLuddeni - 31 May 2006

Thank you very much Frederic, Colas and ILOG for sharing this add-on with the TWikiCommunity!

-- PeterThoeny - 31 May 2006

Hm, how is this different from the great CompareRevisionsAddOn? Which, by the way, has been updated lately to TWiki 4.x and integrates nicely with the HistoryPlugin and the RevCommentPlugin.

-- FranzJosefSilli - 31 May 2006

Hi Franz Josef, we had distinguished, by combining the various possibilities, 18 different diff types. By this way we have worked with ours Human factors specialists to identify which are really useful for the users and how to propose a user friendly interface/functionalities (for example: simple menu with all functionalities, selection a line, in mode TML and HTML, with generation of a single URL, etc). Also, we rested on one of my work of diff which I had carried out before the plug-in CompareRevisionsAddOn exists.

-- FredericLuddeni - 01 Jun 2006

But this needs Phyton, doesn't it? Don't want to introduce yet another dependency. And no to something completely different: GIT. Did you read about the perfomance boost they got by replacing the dependency on diff by their own (internal) diff-implementation? -- Guess there never will be the ultimative diffing tool that meets all needs.

-- FranzJosefSilli - 08 Jun 2006

I added a SHORTDESCRIPTION to the "Add-On Info" section so that this add-on is represented properly in the AddOnPackage topic and query topics. Please feel free to take this into the next release.

Could you also check the TestedOnTWiki options?

-- PeterThoeny - 07 Oct 2006

This looks like a usability bug: I notice that selecting the versions from the dropdowns does not refresh the view. If I then click on the View button, I don't get an update but are lead back to the topic.

-- ArthurClemens - 07 Oct 2006

Thanks for this add on. It is much better than the standard and I really appreciate the way it can diff the raw TWikiML. This is very useful when you are update hmtl forms or code that is part of a wiki page.

-- RickMach - 12 Oct 2006

Hi All,

Peter: Thanks for your comments! It's done in the new release (1.01).

Arthur:

> This looks like a usability bug: I notice that selecting the versions from the dropdowns does not refresh the view.
This case had been taken in consideration during our development. This behavior allows to display a diff between two revisions without having a page reload between each selection.

> If I then click on the View button, I don't get an update but are lead back to the topic.
I Cannot Reproduce your problem. Please can you give me details? What is your TWiki version? Thanks by advance

Rick: thanks a lot for your comment!

-- FredericLuddeni - 10 Nov 2006

I have seen that you had to update the add-on to work with 4.0.5. Out of curiosity, what makes this add-on specific to a patch release? What can we do in the core/skins to remove that dependency?

-- PeterThoeny - 10 Nov 2006

Hi Peter, the only thing I changed is the optional patch which allows to replace the current TWiki diff by this one. This patch is different between the Dakar version 4.0.2 and 4.0.x (where x > 2) because pattern templates have been changed. Thanks for this remark; I updated the documentation to indicate that it does not cover only the version 4.0.5. In the future, I will try to replace the optional patch by new template files (with new skin name) which will override the default templates.

-- FredericLuddeni - 13 Nov 2006

Hi,

I've got an issue with this plugin. Installation went just fine, but when I run it, there is a bunch of errors in my Apache error log:

[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 349.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 350.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 352.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 353.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 354.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 355.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 356.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 358.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 360.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 374.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 375.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 376.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 377.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 390.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 391.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 395.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 399.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 167.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 168.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 411.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 451.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 452.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 453.
[Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] [error] [client 10.10.99.14] [Fri Jan 12 19:02:20 2007] rdiffword: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /taatu/admin/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 454.

I'm running: - TWiki 4.0.5 - Perl 5.8.5 - Python 2.3.4

I'm uninstalling the patch for now. Any help would be appreciated.

-- PeterVanderborght - 12 Jan 2007

I'm testing this on TWiki 4.2, and getting the browser saying

TWiki detected an internal error - please check your TWiki logs and webserver logs for more information.

Can't call method "readTemplate" on an undefined value

[Mon Mar 17 23:41:42 2008] [error] [client xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] Can't call method "readTemplate" on an undefined value at /path/to/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/RDiffWord.pm line 324.
[Mon Mar 17 23:41:42 2008] [error] [client xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]  at /path/to/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI/
RDiffWord.pm line 324
[Mon Mar 17 23:41:42 2008] [error] [client xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] \tTWiki::UI::RDiffWord::diffword('TWiki=HASH(0x
8b85710)') called at /path/to/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI.pm line 159
[Mon Mar 17 23:41:42 2008] [error] [client xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] \tTWiki::UI::__ANON__() called at /path/to/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib//Error.pm line 379
[Mon Mar 17 23:41:42 2008] [error] [client xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] \teval {...} called at /path/to/twiki/lib/CPAN/lib//Error.pm line 371
[Mon Mar 17 23:41:42 2008] [error] [client xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] \tError::subs::try('CODE(0x86f4d40)', 'HASH(0x9
05003c)') called at /path/to/twiki/lib/TWiki/UI.pm line 197
[Mon Mar 17 23:41:42 2008] [error] [client xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] \tTWiki::UI::run('CODE(0x8b7bedc)') called

Any chance of this rather cool plugin being updated to TWiki 4.2?

-- MarcusLeonard - 17 Mar 2008

Hi all,

The new diffword release is available 1.03 (sorry for the delay...). This version works correctly with TWiki 4.2 and is less TWiki dependant (new TWiki upgrade should be transparent). I integrated it in the TWiki configuration panel to facilitate integration. By this way, TWiki scripts have been updated to fetch any diff which respect the RDiff.pm format. In the future, I will improve it to remove the Skin modification (by addind a new variable or other. Remarks are welcome ) and I will try to propose an official patch for TWiki to integrate the Diff selection from the configuration panel.

All remarks/suggestions are welcome!

Have a nice day!

-- FredericLuddeni - 07 Jul 2008

Silly me, perhaps, but the installation instructions could include:

• Check the path to python in your installation. If it is not /usr/bin/python, edit the first line of lib/Python/webdiff appropriately (e.g. /usr/local/bin/python ).

-- DickFurnas - 2009-06-29