[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 34355] Option to show track changes in margin is missing

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34355

--- Comment #149 from Thiago Sueto <herzenschein at gmail.com> ---
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #137)
> This list needs some refinement to become an equivalent to the inline
> tracking (that you would switch off). In particular the actual change needs
> to be shown.

There are at least four more issues with the sidebar:

It needs to have a distinct separation between pages. Track changes in margin
(let's call it TCM for now) shows only the changes done *in each page*. The
sidebar as currently implemented shows a list of changes done in the *entire
document*, which can be fine *if* once the user scrolls or clicks a certain
page the sidebar immediately shows that page's contents.

It needs some sort of highlighting or indication of where the change was done.
One of the advantages of TCM is that you can either search for the change on
the side and follow where it is, or search for the location of the change and
then follow what was changed. With a sidebar, it doesn't seem possible to
implement a colored line linking the location and the change like the TCM does,
but perhaps there's an alternative to that. Not having that kind of defeats the
purpose of an alternative to TCM. The implementation varies, but usually it's a
thicker line for the selected change and a dotted line for non-selected
changes.

It needs better use of vertical and horizontal space. The current
implementation is a box whose size does not extend to the max allowed for the
user's screen. In a 1920x1080 screen, it does not even use half of the vertical
space. Additionally, text size is the same as the rest of the interface and all
information is densely packed, which is bad, since one of the advantages of TCM
is being able to quickly distinguish each change. Each implementation does it a
little different, but some ways to visually distinguish information easier is
by using different colors (each author has an assigned color), different font
weights (author name can be bold while the content of the text is regular),
line spacing, boxes (the outline of baloons), a button to show the entire
change if it's big... If I recall correctly, MS Word has approximately 3 lines
minimum for each change and it will display all information if there's empty
space, WPS Office has only 2 but a click on the change expands the balloon.

It needs reasonable automatic default behavior. Like mentioned above,
immediately show page changes once the user scrolls or clicks the page; expand
the content of the change shown in the sidebar if the user selects text
containing or contained within the change or if they click the sidebar change;
return the sidebar change to its original size if the user clicks elsewhere;
show the entire content of the change on mouse hover.

Whereas there are two advantages of the sidebar:

> But I would go a step further and make the type of information
> variable, eg. per dropdown menu as we have for toolbars.

One is precisely that, the ability to filter which changes are displayed and
which are not.

The other is the ability to scroll through the list of changes. I honestly
believe the WPS Office implementation of TCM works better and is more visually
pleasing than that of Microsoft Word, for instance, precisely because it does
highlighting, scrolling, and good use of vertical and horizontal space (2 lines
suffices). While the sidebar is quite different, it achieves the same result.

> There are different use cases to solve with this sidebar and some may need the change, other the author.

I fully agree. When I proofread text, I almost never need to see the author of
the change (since I'm usually the only one to add changes to the document),
only the change itself. I can imagine a peer-reviewer would need to see the
author, change, comments, and date, that a company employee working
collaboratively would need to see the comments, author, and change, that a
school/university student would only like to see the comments, etc.

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