Rich version history

Nobody has claimed this yet.

This is a place to capture links and ideas related to what I'll call "rich version history" for files stored in Nextcloud.

How to use GitHub

Please use the 👍 reaction to show that you are interested into the same feature.
Please don't comment if you have no relevant information to add. It's just extra noise for everyone subscribed to this issue.
Subscribe to receive notifications on status change and new comments.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
As of version 23, Nextcloud does a great job of saving past versions of files. It's just one click to download a version or revert to it.

What is perhaps missing is a way to visualize who did what, when (and why). Change authors appear in the sidebar under "Activity", while Version list/download/revert actions appear on another tab. This makes it harder to collaborate with people on documents without also keeping in close, frequent conversation about the context of a particular document.

For example, say you notice a change to a document frequently read and maintained by several people. You click on "Versions" and see it happened last week, but there were several other changes as well. You're unable to figure out who did what so you have to start by ask the whole team. If you only knew who did what and when, their intent (the "why") would be much easier to derive.

Describe the solution you'd like

Provide UI/UX for visualizing differences between versions of a document. This seems especially straightforward for plain text / Markdown documents. Less so for office documents, images, and other media.
Make the "why" (author intent / why a change was made) optional or an improvement for a later time. If/when that happens it could be implemented as a "version comment" where an author could explain why they made a particular change.
Include author name in the "Versions" tab/area.

Describe alternatives you've considered
I currently use manual/offline/external tools to automate snapshotting and comparisons of files and directory trees (rsync, diff, etc.).

Additional context
Related or possibly related:

No implementation files, tests, or entry points are named. Start by reviewing the related issues and pull request listed in the description, then inspect the existing Versions and Activity areas in the text app. Done would require an agreed design and implementation for version differences and author display, with scope for version comments still undecided.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Rich version history

Description