Re: Google Summer of Code 2009: GIT

Hi,

On Thu, 19 Mar 2009, david@lang.hm wrote:

all three formats mentioned here (OOXML, ODF, SVG) are XML-based formats 
and a single flexible XML merge driver could potentially handle all 
three (as well as other formats). for that matter, the ODF specs cover 
multiple types of data, and I suspect that appropriate conflict markers 
for text could well end up being different than the ones for 
spreadsheets.

You are misunderstanding me.

The fact that all three are XML based has nothing to do with the _real_ 
goal of the project.

IOW a user trying to 3-way-merge ODF files could not care less if the 
underlying technical details involve having an extra merge driver for XML 
files or not.

The user cares about the ease of use, about the user interface.  That is 
what I want to focus on.

And if we end up with a beautiful XML merge driver at the end of the 
summer that nobody uses, I will be not only a little disappointed.

So let's look at the _nature_ of the data at hand, i.e. text, marked-up 
text, images (we could include UML, which is also XML-based, and where the 
XML merge driver is as relevant for the user experience as for the 
others), and how to make it _easy_ to resolve merge conflicts there.

Ciao,
Dscho