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Suggestion
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Resolution: Won't Do
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NOTE: This suggestion is for Confluence Server. Using Confluence Cloud? See the corresponding suggestion.
We heavily use macro "containers" like the Numbered Headings plugin, and I noticed that page version comparisons don't seem to present the same "terse" delta of changes within a "container" that it does with content outside of a container.
For a decently large page where much of the content is inside a container, targeted changes end up with version comparisons distributed by email that are very hard to skim to understand the often small set of changes. The same holds for comparisons pulled up in the Confluence web site.
I established a test page for this that included a block of content that was at the top level of the page, a block of content inside an "Info" macro, and a block of content inside a NumberedHeadings macro. After making a targeted change to each block, a version comparison tersely presents the delta for the top content block (that wasn't contained in a macro), while it includes the entirety of the two containers.
If my memory serves, an older version of Confluence might have had a "jump to next difference" set of anchor links on the left hand side, so re-introducing something like that could help mitigate this, but I would also think that it is probably reasonable to just show the same focused delta view within a container.
I created a sample page in a Sandbox wiki space in my install. I exported that page to the attached SANDBOX-120416-2.xml.zip, and I also attached a screen capture of the page contents itself, and a screen capture of the diff. I just changed the word "fox" to "dog" in each of its 3 occurrences on the page.
NOTE: I had originally brought this up under the Atlassian Answers forum, and hence the following thread could be commented on at https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/151202/suggestion-question-about-breakdown-in-terse-version-comparisons as this issue moves through its lifecycle.
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- Closed
[CONFSERVER-28720] Lots of text inside a diff view of a bodied macro doesn't compress unchanged text with an elipsis
Johannes Ritter
added a comment - Same issue here. This makes our notification emails nearly useless because it is so hard to find the part that was actually changed.
Johannes Ritter
added a comment - Same issue here. This makes our notification emails nearly useless because it is so hard to find the part that was actually changed. I'm having this same issue and it is making one of my large pages very inconvenient to use with Numbered Headings. It would be great if there was a fix for this issue!
I apparently didn't notice the most recent comment on this issue 2 years ago, and I only now happened to look back at this...
The diff highlights changes correctly. The issue I'm reporting is that the diff engine doesn't collapse unchanged sections within a container/panel. Where as it does do that when diff'ing sections of unchanged content that is not contained in a panel, making the diff of a page with a lot of content much more manageable.
Image TestDiffPage-PageComparisonWithSingleChangeInEachArea-NoteThatFullInfoContentsIsIncluded.png
shows the current diff working near the top of the page, but not in the panel near the bottom of the page.
Image DoctoredScreenCaptureToHighlightRequestedFeatureChange.png
shows how I would like Confluence to behave in this case.
Got you! Thanks for the clear explanation! Makes sense. I'll rename the issue accordingly.
Thanks for reviewing this. Sorry that my initial description wasn't clearer.
I agree that the diff is technically correct, but what this feature request is meant to highlight is that the page comparison generally seems to replace large blocks of unchanged text with a single line of "...". However, that doesn't seem to occur inside macro containers. Hence, if a large chunk of the page content is inside a macro container (such as an Info or NumberHeadings macro), then we lose the nice "..." replacements and it becomes much harder to visually scan for the differences.
I took my screen capture of how Confluence's current page comparison works (TestDiffPage-PageComparisonWithSingleChangeInEachArea-NoteThatFullInfoContentsIsIncluded), and doctored it to highlight how I would have liked it to work. That is attached as "DoctoredScreenCaptureToHighlightRequestedFeatureChange.png" and has two "..." lines that are circled in red which I manually put in using an image editor in place of unchanged content within the macro container.
Hopefully this comment clarified my request, but let me know if it still isn't clear.
Sorry, I'm a bit confused. In your Diff Page it looks like its working correctly - it's showing the diff inside the macro container... am I missing something?
Thank you for raising this suggestion.
We regret to inform you that due to limited demand, we have no plans to implement it in the foreseeable future. In order to set expectations, we're closing this request now. Sometimes potentially valuable tickets do get closed where the Summary or Description has not caught the attention of the community. If you feel that this suggestion is valuable, consider describing in more detail or outlining how this request will help you achieve your goals. We may then be able to provide better guidance.
For more context, check out our Community blog on our updated workflow for Suggestions
Cheers,
Confluence Product Management