Git (or Hg) plugin for dealing with Microsoft Word and/or OpenOffice files

Question

Has anyone come across a Git or Hg plugin for "meaningful" diffs/merging/branching of OpenOffice or Microsoft word files.

I know I can 'checkin' .doc files but both Git and Hg treat them as binary blobs. I'd like to be able to do all (or at least many) of the normal revision based operations on the text of the file.

And yes, I do know that I should be using Latex or converting files back-and-forth between RTF. I'm just looking for a more "native" solution since I'm trying to manage collaboration between techies and "management people".

This is related to my question on Biostar here: http://biostar.stackexchange.com/questions/1749/writing-collaboration-with-source-control-and-microsoft-word

Thanks.

Answer 1

Law firms have extremely robust systems for doing this. One's that don't trust the revision history in the document (because it's externally sourced) and instead do their own comparisons and can provide deltas. If that's what they really need you're better off buying that than putting a wrapper into git or mercurial that will never really be useable for them.

Sorry to sound like pessimist, but it's more likely that the techies will use (while grumbling) the over priced commercial tool than it is that the office folks will use git or mercurial to any level of satisfaction.

Answer 2

Using svn (not git or hg, but you could have a gateway), there is an extension for Ooo working on uncompressed XML files, see my answer about a similar question. BTW, if ever you look at the plugin code and make it hg-aware instead of svn, please let me know! ;-)

Cheers,
Christophe.

= Don't wait for a light to appear at the end of the tunnel, stride down there and light the bloody thing yourself. --Sara Henderson =