Improving Version-Aware Word Documents

Coakley et al. described how they developed Version Aware Word Documents, which is an enhanced document representation that includes a detailed version history that is self-contained and portable. However, they were not able to adopt the unique-ID-based techniques that have been shown to support efficient merging and differencing algorithms. This application note describes how it is possible to adapt existing features of MS Word's OOXML representation to provide a system of unique element IDs suitable for those algorithms. This requires taking over Word's Revision Save ID (RSID) system and also defining procedures for specifying ID values for elements that do not support the RSID mechanism. Important limitations remain but appear surmountable.