ikiwiki/doc/todo/preview_changes.mdwn

When editing a page, it would help to have a "preview changes" or "show diff" button, which brings up a diff from the current page content to the proposed new page content. --[[JoshTriplett]]

Some discussion from the main [[/index/discussion]] page:

>It would be nice to be able to have a button to show "Differences" (or "Show Diff") when
>editing a page. Is that an option that can be enabled?
>
>> It's doable, it could even be done by a [[todo/plugin]], I think.
>> --[[Joey]]

---

I need help with this. Supposedly, such a plugin would provide a `formbuilder_setup`
hook which would add the button, and a cgi hook which would interecept
"Show Diff" clicks. This would show a diff between
`titlepage(possibly_foolish_untaint($form->field("page")))`
and the provided `$form->field("editcontent")`.

But:

  * How could the case of concurrent editing be handled ?
    Especially as (I think) only the RCS backend can know that
    this has happened.
  * May I hijack the `page_preview` template variable to show
    my diff output? (the patch below assumes this).
  * Using the formbuilder hook to add a button, and coerce `editpage()`
    into showing the edit form again rather that saving the page needs
    the following patch. (note that this is not the only template which has
    its submit buttons hardcoded; is this supposed to work around something?)

I've got a [preliminary implementation](http://www.jk.fr.eu.org/ikiwiki/showdiff.pm),
which depends on [this patch](http://www.jk.fr.eu.org/ikiwiki/pluggable_editpage_buttons.diff)
and the [[plugins/contrib/plaintext]] plugin.

There is still some tweaking needed, though.

--[[JeremieKoenig]]