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Dev Tools & Micro-SaaS Stack Exchange · 2024-03-01

Using Git for technical docs? Diff is useless for .docx

用 Git 管理技术文档？diff 对 .docx 基本无效

At a glance · 30-second read
  • WhoStack Exchange · 2024-03-01 · 1 upvotes · 2 replies
  • The askUsing Git for technical docs? Diff is useless for .docx
  • The openingA smart Word↔Markdown converter with semantic diff rendering as a CI bot showing doc changes in PRs.

What was actually said

“The team wants Git for product docs. Markdown is fine, but contracts/specs are Word files — binary diffs and merges are terrible.”

— Stack Exchange · 2024-03-01 · softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/89985/is-it…

Background and pain

The pain

Docs-as-code is a real trend, but there's no usable conversion/preview/merge layer between Word workflows and Git.

A buildable angle

The opening

A smart Word↔Markdown converter with semantic diff rendering as a CI bot showing doc changes in PRs.

How to validate it

  1. Read the whole thread and note the recurring scenarios — repetition is the density of the need.
  2. Search existing tools around "docs / git" and check which single step they actually cover.
  3. Put up a one-line landing page, share it back to Stack Exchange, and see whether anyone asks about pricing.

Existing options

PandocSharePoint

From the thread · top comments

You can use GIT for any files. I store code, images, notes, documentation, help files and even database schema, all in one place. Basically everything except the executable and the database. So a version branch has all the related information. There is absolutely no issue storing binary files in GIT, apart from more storage (as you have noted).

— Rohit Gupta · ▲ 2

You can do what you are describing, it will just use more space. Below I give an alterative approach that is closer to how Git is intended to be used that allows for in-document change tracking and significantly smaller file sizes. Ideally your PDFs would be generated from a text-based input such as LaTeX and then you would have the source in one place and be able to see differences between versions as intended with Git. While you can, you should not use Git for generated files such as PDFs and instead these should be uploaded as releases on GitHub/GitLab. You should also track the script used

— Henry Ginn · ▲ 1
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Related opportunities

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