[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 120729] User-Unfriendly Display of Tracked Modifications (if tracking modifications is on)

Wed May 8 22:03:20 UTC 2019

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=120729

Adalbert Hanßen <adalbert.hanssen at gmx.de> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|NEEDINFO                    |UNCONFIRMED
     Ever confirmed|1                           |0

--- Comment #3 from Adalbert Hanßen <adalbert.hanssen at gmx.de> ---
This demonstration is done with LibreOffice
Version: 6.3.0.0.alpha0+
Build ID: 98630a0bd49bd80652145a21e4e0d0ded792b36b
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 4.4; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3; 
TinderBox: Linux-rpm_deb-x86_64 at 86-TDF, Branch:master, Time:
2019-05-04_04:44:35
Locale: de-DE (de_DE.UTF-8); UI-Language: en-US
Calc: threaded
Since this is an English version, I now see the English names of the functions
in the dialogues.

The relevant functions are (and most of them can also be accessed through
View>Toolbars>Track Changes):

    1. Edit>Track Changes>Record: If this one is checked, all modifications are
recorded, otherwise they are not recorded (and those changes can not be
verified as changes later).

    2. Edit>Track Changes>Show: If this one is checked, modifications are shown
in color and if the mouse is moved over one, the time of the change and the
author are shown after a second. Otherwise the changes are not shown, the final
version which is reached if all changes were accepted, is shown.

    3. Edit>Track Changes>Manage which opens its own dialogue window with two
sub-tabs, namely List and Filter.

    4. Edit>Track Changes>Manage Tab List shows a list of all recorded changes
together with the timestamps of them and the authors, who applied them.

    5. Edit>Track Changes>Manage Tab Filter lets you enter criteria to filter
changes by time, author, action or comment. Selected changes can be accepted or
rejected altogether or one by one. 

Other than complained about in the bug report, the Edit>Track Changes>Show flag
is no longer set to True when the file gets stored. 

It looks like this part of
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=120729 is fixed in this
version 6.3.0.0.alpha0+ used for my test.

I also made some more proposals to improve revising documents. One of my
proposals dealt with going from one change to the next one or to the last one.
If one uses Edit>Track Changes>Manage Tab List, the changes shown in that list
reflect the order of the changes in the text. If one clicks on one of them in
the Manage Changes dialogue with List, this immediately moves the cursor to the
associated change. So by going through the list in forward or backward
direction, it is now possible, to accept or reject the changes in the text and
to quickly move to the next change without first having to search for it. Also
this can be done with the purple bckwards arrow or with the blue foreward arrow
in the View>Toolbars>Track Changes  View>Toolbars>Track Changes toolbar.

However, the counterpart to selecting a changed position in the editor window
does not move the mark in the corresponding Edit>Track Changes>Manage Tab List
window. In order to find the appropriate change, one might sort the changes by
time and then search the right one by looking at the time stamp shown by the
mouse-over action in the editor window. That’s a bit awkward!

By using the criterion Action of the dialogue Edit>Track Changes>Manage Tab
Filter, one can for example select Formats to select all format changes. If
this is done, those format changes are selected in the parallel Edit>Track
Changes>Manage Tab List dialogue. There they can be accepted all together,
rejected altogether or accepted or rejected case by case ony dealing with
format changes.

However, when revising a document, one often does not want to care for
formatting issues and many formatting changes are very distracting. So it is
advisable to be able to not show any format changes  (all formatting stuff
including insertion and deletion of multiple white spaces, replacing spaces
with non-breaking spaces and vice versa, replacements of spaces with tabs and
vice versa). Also it might be beneficial, to also suppress any orthography
amendments (e.g. through something related to spell checking) and all
amendments with respect to punctuation, since in almost all cases such changes
are done on the fly and a subsequent proofreader prefers not be distracted by
many of such (in most cases) unsubstantial changes.

Edit>Track Changes>Manage Tab Filter with selection of Date seems to have no
influence: I would expect that they also operate on the changes shown in the
Edit>Track Changes>Manage Tab List window and preferably those changes not
selected through the filter criteria are not shown highlighted in the editor
window (i.e. they all are shown as if they had been all accepted). Right now
the modifications filtered out of the List window are shown in the editor
window despite the filter function. The suppressed modifications are shown with
highlight despite they are deselected through the filter critereon. That might
be improved.

By the way: a version of Microsoft Word for Windows which I have used for some
extended time before I completely switched to Linux+LibreOffice had the ability
to not show all changes which only dealt with formatting. I often switched that
off when revising documents.

I have seen, there already is a function to accept all changes in the marked
part of the document: It can be found under Context Menu (of selected part of
the document in the editor window) >Accept Change or Context Menu>Reject
Change.

I'll also upload this comment as an odt file which has some Track Changes
recorded in it, so that one has an easy start point for accepting or not
accepting a document, applying format changes on the fly and see how easy it is
to proceed with those functions. I would see myself often switching recording
changes on and off between corrections of typing errors, correcting wrong
punctuation and typos and real work on the text.

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