Read / Write Doc via JSON / Apps Script

[Brendan Rocks]

Currently, you're using the google drive API to download / upload documents in odt/docx format. An alternative is to use google apps script to upload/download a JSON representation of the document. Downloading is already possible via https://github.com/krilor/gdoc2json (tested). However, uploading would probably require writing software which:

• Recursivley parse the JSON tree of the uploaded and original documents
• diffs them, extracting the nature and location of changes
• Converts the JSON diffs to function/method calls, which can be applied to the document structure to add/remove the differing elements

Which sounds like a lot of work for marginal benefit.

Advantages of Drive API relative to Apps Script:

• No extra code to write in a weird subset of JavaScript to make upload/download possible
• Most features supported
• Pandoc reader / writer already written and mature
• User does not have to trust a remote script (there is no way to verify that a remote script is what it says it is), or upload the scripts themselves (fiddly, error prone, tricky to automate, additional permissions / scopes)

Advantages of Apps Script relative to Drive API:

• Could modify existing document, rather than adding and deleting everything, as currently happens (thus removing any existing comments)
• The above would allow for much more frequent pushing / pulling
• Could detect code blocks, and inline
• Avoid styling via odt/docx format (awkward, indirect, lossy)
• Easier to version control JSON