Hello developers,
I have an itch that I'm interested in scratching. When editing but
before saving changes, I find myself wishing I could see a diff
between the current version and my revision, so I can more accurately
state for the edit summary what I had changed.
I'm thinking of a "Preview with diff" feature that would let me see my
changes not only in terms of what the page will look like but also in
terms of what the diff will be, before the page is saved. In other
words, invoking the feature would show the tentative diff above and
the tentative changes below, in the same manner that actual diffs are
shown.
This feature might be integrated as a user preference so that a new
button doesn't have to be added to the editing interface; enabling
this feature would cause all invocations of the Preview feature to
include the diff. (There may be better ways of providing access to
this feature; this is just what came to mind first.)
I didn't spot this idea mentioned in previous discussions on this list
or
wikimedia.org when I briefly searched for it. Has this been
considered before? If so, please point me to the pertinent discussion
so I can understand the issues involved. If not, what are your
thoughts about this--does it sound useful? What are some of the
potential pitfalls?
If this idea sounds reasonable to members of this list, I'm willing to
try to implement it myself, although any help would of course be
welcome.
Best wishes,
Alan