lasertooth / wordmerge

Copyright (c) 2014 Jason Masker [email protected] All rights reserved.

This file is part of wordMerge.

wordMerge is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

wordMerge is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with wordMerge. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Version 2014-02-08

wordMerge

Overview

wordMerge is a git merge driver for OSX/darwin which can be used to merge Microsoft Word documents using the commercial software Microsoft Office for Mac 2011.

'wordMerge' is the primary driver, a shell script wrapper which passes applescript commands to the 'osascript' command-line tool, included with OS X.

Usage

Copy wordMerge into your path and make it executable.

cp wordMerge /usr/local/bin
chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/wordMerge

Copy the configuration from the included 'gitconfig' into your '~/.gitconfig' global git configuration file. Alternatively, you can issue the following commands:

git config --global merge.wordMerge.name wordMerge
git config --global merge.wordMerge.driver 'wordMerge "$PWD/%O" "$PWD/%A" "$PWD/%B"'
git config --global merge.wordMerge.recursive binary

You will also need to create or modify the 'attributes' file in the 'info' directory of your git repositories to identify the file types that should be merged using the new driver. An example 'attributes' file has been included which includes the following:

*.docx binary
*.dotx binary
*.docx merge=wordMerge
*.dotx merge=wordMerge

Add any other file extensions you would like to merge using Microsoft Word.

When a merge of two files with the identified extensions is required, it will be performed using the newly defined wordMerge driver. Microsoft Word will open the common ancestor and merge the local and remote branches, tracking changes.

The process will pause for the user to accept or reject the tracked changes using the Review panel in Word.

Make any final edits and select 'Yes' or 'No' from the script prompt to indicate if the merge was successful or not. Marking the merge as unsuccessful gives the user an opportunity to pause or cancel the merge process.

Caveats

If there are formatting changes, Microsoft Word cannot merge them and will prompt for which document to use as a base for formatting. Formatting changes to tables, etc. will need to be done manually. When prompted, it is almost always best to choose the formatting for the 'Current Document' and not the 'Target Document.' This is because the merge action in Word is actually performed twice per merge. The common ancestor is opened and first the local branch changes are merged in, followed by the remote branch changes. Though you may be prompted twice, by choosing 'Current Document' each time, you are effectively keeping the formatting of the common ancestor.

Due to the interactive nature of the script, it works best for a regular merge. If you opt to rebase using this merge driver, it will work, but there will be a manual, interactive merge step for each change, which can be a tedious and redundant process.

The script requires tracking the windows open in Microsoft Word and, in order to accomplish this, begins by closing all open documents and saving changes. It is best to close all open documents, or ensure that Microsoft Word is not running prior to beginning a merge. It is a future objective to eliminate this requirement and behavior.

TODO

• Modify the script to work reliably without first closing all open Word documents.
• Modify driver for use as a diff driver.