Change Tracking Improvements in Collabora Online

COOL Days 2025 (https://www.collaboraonline.com/events/cool-days-2025/), Budapest

Video record: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWfAOkRXFXc

1. Change Tracking Improvements Miklos Vajna Senior Software Engineer 2025-06-04
2. 2/13 Meet Miklos Vajna • From Hungary • More details: https://www.collaboraonline.com/about-us/ • Google Summer of Code 2010 / 2011 • Rewrite of the Writer RTF import/export • Then a full-time LibreOffice developer for SUSE • Finally a contractor at Collabora since 2013
3. 3/13 Per-user recording of changes For everyone or just me
4. 4/13 Motivation • If changes are recorded: flag in the model • Scenario: Alice & Bob types • Alice enables recording • Bob continues typing, surprisingly now changes are recorded • Not always wanted
5. 5/13 Solution Give users a choice: record for everyone or just me
6. 6/13 Re-instate of changes For both insertions and deletions
7. 7/13 Re-instate: reject with history
8. 8/13 Re-instate of a delete
9. 9/13 Interdependent change tracking Change on top of an other change
10. 10/13 Delete on top of insert • Probably the combination that works the best • Still reject didn’t work nicely after undo, now implemented
11. 11/13 Format on top of insert from DOCX • This wasn’t implemented at all:
12. 12/13 Format on top of insert on accept This was only partially implemented
13. 13/13 Summary Change tracking is improving in Collabora Online Writer • Recording is now per-view if wanted • Re-instate allows rejecting insert & delete with history • Interdependent change tracking is better • Extended handling of insert/delete/format on top of each other