Ckeditor5: Tracking changes (suggestion mode)

[dileep8014]

does current version of ckeditor5 support tracking changes ? something similar to http://nytimes.github.io/ice/demo/

[dileep8014]

@Reinmar

[Reinmar]

No, not yet. It's on our roadmap and we plan to work on this feature this year.

[dileep8014]

@Reinmar - Thank you, i am trying to implement this feature in my app and tried creating a plugin which will enable Track Changes if turned on , should i follow below approach and get the position of caret and track down the key input behavior or i can use Typing plugin in a way to handle this to get the current position and track down key input ?

editor.editing.view.document.on( 'keydown', ( event, data ) => {
})

[pjasiun]

The feature is very complex. Typing is only the tip of the iceberg. There is a long list of actions to be handled: typing, deletion, paragraph split or merge, wrapping into a blockquote, image insertion or changing a style of an image, just to name few. Then, all of these features need to have UI to show the difference between the old and the new version of the document. There is also the problem how to represent the document with changes. What should the user get when he call getData? (the document without changes, or maybe there should be a flag to get the document with changes before they are applied?). Finally, what with third-party plugins, and how to make them work fine with suggestions? In fact, suggestion mode is one of the biggest challenges ahead we have at this point.

[dileep8014]

Any idea when this is going to be moved forward, any timeline ?

@Reinmar @pjasiun

[pjasiun]

We plan to start working on it still this year, but, since it is a very big task, for sure it will not be ready this year. And for sure it will be ready next year, hopefully in Q1 2019. I know that it is not much information but since the task is very big and we are still at the research stage, I can promise nothing more.

[pjasiun]

As you might have already seen on our twitter, we are intensively working on this feature.

In the very first version, we let you track typing, deleting, paragraph split and merge, so basically content changes. The ETA does not change, and we still plan to have it ready Q1 2019, maybe even closer to the beginning of it than to the end of it. Then we will work on more features, like widget insertion in the track changes mode, tracking document formatting and adding comments for suggestions. In the first version, these features will be disabled in the track changes mode.

Hopefully, soon track changes join the family of CKEditor 5 collaboration solutions (working with real-time collaboration, but also without it, it will be possible to use it with your custom backend) :)

[dileep8014]

this is great

[Mgsy]

Hi, @dileep8014! Last week we had a release and the track changes plugin was a part of it. Check it out on our documentation page. Hope you'll enjoy it!