HN Explorer

Ask HN: Tool to download a Google doc as a Git file (version history)?

7 points by beckman466 ↗ HN
Is there a tool out there that allows me to download a git version of a google doc? There is a richness to the development of a text, yet when I download a document as a word file, I lose that richness.

Is there maybe another collaborative word processing solution that supports this feature, that I've yet to find?

6 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 26.5 ms ] thread
emayljames
Google deliberately chose to make their docs format completely server side, with no way to download a copy. In this case, the only thing you have is the raw html.

There are open solutions, such as the Collabora LibreOffice web version, that provides LO through the browser and has elements of collaboration.

https://www.collabora.com/about-us/open-source/open-source-p...

vitovito
Do you need a git version? Or do you just need to be able to experience the development of a text?

If the latter, you can use Draftback (described: [1], download: [2]) to get an Etherpad-style time slider in the text.

If you needed to preserve that view, you could screen record the playback. You could also dissect the Chrome extension and turn its rendering output into something else, a text revision with each change, suitable for checking into version control? I'm not sure how Draftback handles rich formatting, images, tables, or the like; you'd have to figure that out, too. You'd also have to match the checkins to the time spent doing the writing, or you'd miss out on the cadence of the writing. And is there even a tool that lets you visually scrub through a document's changes in git with a time slider or equivalent?

[1]: http://features.jsomers.net/how-i-reverse-engineered-google-...

[2]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/draftback/nnajoiem...

roetlich
> Is there maybe another collaborative word processing solution that supports this feature, that I've yet to find?

Well, overleaf, technically. You can sync it with a git repo.

gitgud
Overleaf is a great tool. Just to add in case anyone isn't familiar:

- Edits LaTeX documents

- Text editor with live preview

- Git source control

https://www.overleaf.com/

cpach
I’ve thought about those kind of solutions a lot.

The closest things I know of that resembles that are Confluence and Mediawiki.

There’s also Xwiki, but I haven’t yet tried it.