Re: backporting changes to exported results for collaborative editing

["Charles C. Berry" <ccberry@ucsd.edu>]

On Tue, 7 Feb 2017, Marcin Borkowski wrote:

>
> On 2017-02-07, at 02:15, Samuel Wales <samologist@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> suppose you export a subtree to ascii or html, and then a bunch of
>> people want to help you edit it.  obviously you want the changes back
>> in org.
>>
>> obviously the best would be if you could give them the source,
>> complete with comments.  but assume that they are not computer people,
>> and not org people, and you don't want to give them your irrelevant
>> comments.
>>
>> also assume you also don't want to give them your irrelevant tasks and
>> you do not use org-export-with-tasks.
>>
>> it might be that i already know the answer: just do the best you can
>> with diff, and request small sets of changes at a time, or request
>> manual instructions for changes.  but perhaps you have ideas?
>
> Maybe this could be automated a bit?  Like, org -> markdown, then
> people's edits, then diff generating a patch, then some tool existing
> only in my dreams currently that converts the md patch to an org patch,
> and then apply that patch to the original org?  For small enough
> changes, that could actually work, no?
>

Maybe, but this sequence might be easier:

- export subtree to md =edit-me.md= (body-only not needed but cleaner)

- distribute to editor and retrieve as =editted.md=

- in a shell run ~pandoc -o editted.org editted.md~

- M-x ediff-regions RET
   - select all of =editted.org=
   - select original subtree
   - Use `##' to skip the whitespace only diffs.
   - resolve the differences as appropriate and/or save the diffs.


Babel blocks/results are *not* be handled seamlessly, so more would
need to be done if your editor wants to revise them. Otherwise, just
skip them.

I guess this might work with ascii or html, but I've not tried it.


Chuck