Creating a comparison document

You can create a document that shows the differences between two documents. For example, you might want to compare two different views from IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS® Next (DOORS Next), or two versions of a test case or test plan in IBM Engineering Test Management.

About this task

There are two ways to generate comparison documents:

Procedure

Generating a base document and comparison document at the same time

You can compare two documents that are generated from two configuration contexts of an artifact, for Microsoft Word output only. PUB generates the target document as well as the base document and then compares them to generate a comparison document.

Procedure

  1. In Launcher, open the document specification for the document that you want to generate.
  2. In the Document Specification view under Data Sources, right-click your data source and select OSLC Base Configuration Selection.
  3. Select the OSLC Service catalog, Service provider and Selection dialog that you want to use.
  4. Select Use external browser only if you encounter problems with the embedded browser in the wizard. Click Next.
    • If you did not select the Use external browser check box, choose the configuration by using the embedded browser in the wizard.
      Note:
      • You must authenticate again when the embedded browser loads the page for the first time.
      • If the full selection of options is not visible, scroll down to find the OK or Select buttons.
    • If you selected the Use external browser check box, choose the configuration in an external browser.
  5. Pick a resource, for example a baseline and click OK and Finish
  6. The resource URL for the selected configuration is updated in the Base Configuration-Context property of the data source in the Properties view.
    Base Configuration-Context
  7. Save the document specification.
  8. Generate the document by clicking the Generate document icon Generate document icon in the toolbar.
    The base document is generated using the same template that is used for target document generation.
  9. The document generation results window shows three documents:
    • target_document_name.doc
    • base_target_document_name.doc
    • compare_target_document_name.doc
    When prompted, open the generated documents.
    Note:
    • If password is set for the Microsoft Word output, you can use the same password to open Target document, Base document and Compare document.
    • If Comparison base document is password protected, use its password as the value for Base document password field.

Generating a comparison document from an existing base document

Before you begin

Generate a base document.

About this task

After you generate a base document, generate a second document (target document) to compare against the base document. When generating the target document, specify the settings for the comparison document in the document specification. Both the target document and the comparison document will be generated. Comparison documents are supported for Microsoft Word output only. Multi-part documents are not supported.

Procedure

  1. In Launcher, open the document specification for the target document that you want to compare to the base document.
    In the Document Specification view, configure the data source for the target document if not already configured under Templates > Data Source
  2. In the Document Specification view under Output, select Output: Word.
  3. In the Properties view set the following properties:
    1. Comparison base document: Enter the path or browse on your file system to the first document that you want to compare.
    2. Track changes author: Specify the author name for comparison tracked changes. The default value is user.
    3. Base document username: Enter the username for the base document if it is an HTTP-secured resource.
    4. Base document password: Enter the password for the base document if required.
    5. Base document cookies: Enter any cookies, such as if you generated the Word document within the Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next application instead of using Engineering Publishing.
  4. Generate the document by clicking the Generate document icon Generate document icon in the toolbar.
  5. Both the target document and the comparison document are generated. The comparison document is stored in the same directory as the target Word document and is named compare_target_document. When prompted, open the generated documents.

    In the comparison document, the differences between the base document and the target document are shown as tracked changes in Microsoft Word.

    Comparison document showing tracked changes highlighted in red