
Rendered Prose Diffs - dieulot
https://github.com/blog/1784-rendered-prose-diffs
======
munificent
This is wonderful. I'm writing a book[1] and it's in markdown and on github.
The diffs look great for it:

[https://github.com/munificent/game-programming-
patterns/comm...](https://github.com/munificent/game-programming-
patterns/commit/2a02d1f8c5093a73e5258c55aac3b0f531d01435#rdiff-5e512bb6ba6e40cffa2a6bdab2cfb5a0)

[1]:
[http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/](http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/)

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gwern
Word-diffs are great for prose; line-based diffs are completely opaque for
editing. If you've ever looked at a lot of copyediting in a line-based diff,
you have no idea what actually happened. Look at some edits on Wikipedia and
imagine trying to view them in a default git log... Fortunately, you can use
`diff --color-words` or a tool like `wdiff` to get better diffs. (An example:
[http://www.gwern.net/docs/2002-radiance#diff](http://www.gwern.net/docs/2002-radiance#diff)
)

------
edj
This is fantastic!

Version control is a killer feature for writers, particularly those working
collaboratively.

There are actually already a few projects out there that offer version control
for writers. Draft and Penflip come to mind.

Draft: [https://draftin.com/](https://draftin.com/)

Penflip: [https://www.penflip.com/](https://www.penflip.com/)

------
bri3d
Ties in perfectly with the Git + file-based CMS approach as used by (one of
many examples) Asana: [http://eng.asana.com/2014/02/scaling-asana-
com/](http://eng.asana.com/2014/02/scaling-asana-com/) .

Cool feature!

------
bowerbird
some previous notes of mine on the display of prose diffs:

1\. the general idea:

> [http://zenmagiclove.com/phrase-change-
> display.html](http://zenmagiclove.com/phrase-change-display.html)

>
> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5639728](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5639728)

 __*

2\. an example:

> [http://zenmagiclove.com/phrase-change-
> sample.html](http://zenmagiclove.com/phrase-change-sample.html)

>
> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5648071](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5648071)

 __*

3\. a demo with the gettysburg address:

>
> [http://zenmagiclove.com/misc/gabal/gabal.html](http://zenmagiclove.com/misc/gabal/gabal.html)

>
> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6765685](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6765685)

 __*

i have working code, if github (or anyone else) is interested.

-bowerbird

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ivan_ah
Very cool, but only for markdown. :(

I guess I'll still have to run `scm-latexdiff` manually between commits. Still
it's nice to see tools evolving beyound line diffs.

~~~
gjtorikian
Well, sort of. It works for AsciiDoc, Textile, and all other formats supported
by [https://github.com/github/markup](https://github.com/github/markup)

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natdempk
Definitely cool, and it looks really pretty. I'm glad that github is going in
the direction of "put all of your stuff here, not just code".

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erichocean
I'd love to see this for Fountain documents
([http://fountain.io/](http://fountain.io/)).

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robinhoodexe
Neat, I'll definitely use this with LaTeX.

~~~
nernst
Would it work with Latex? Doesn't Github have to supply the renderer itself?

~~~
raganwald
I do not speak for GitHub, but anonymous sources inform me that the feature
only works with prose formats that have a built-in renderer. So basically, if
you can preview the file, you can get a rendered diff for it.

This seems to confirm your suggestion :-)

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icco
Any idea how they're doing this?

