Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 24585
Working with Review is somewhat unintuitive
Last modified: 2013-02-07 22:42:41 UTC
Could someone look at the changes review UI and change it to group the functions together in a toolbar, as it seems confusing to have a sub menu item only for it. The toolbar could appear when the change tracking is turned on, and disappear when it is turned off. I work extensively with documents that have change tracking, and this would be a major obstacle to take-up within the organisation. The versioning interface needs to be revamped as well, allowing for creating a new version on each save and allowing reverting to a previous version from within the versions dialog.
Reassigned to BH
I think that a proofing toolbar is an important addition to the UI to bring it to a level that is useful. I have whipped up a few preliminary icons for such a toolbar and am including them. I would suggest that the Toolbar have at least the following buttons Record Changes, Comment, Accept/Reject Changes, Protect, Merge The protect icon needs some work, I was going for a key over the proofed text, not sure it looks quite right. There my be a better way to do the Accept Reject as well. The ab.png is the template I was using for most of the icons.
Created attachment 24216 [details] Proofing Toolbar icons and prototype
Also shouldn't there be a target milestone set on this by now, at least OOo Later or something? This is a really simple enhancement I would think. At first you could just make the toolbar an optional one which you have to turn on manually.
To further improve usability of the change tracking system, if would be great to have a special context menu for words marked as "changed", like MS Word offers. By this, _single_ changes can be accepted/rejected with only 2 klicks and litte mouse moving. (To accept/reject a large number of changes, the existing dialog will always be the more efficient way.) This can be seen as an alternative approach to an additional change tracking toolbar. Maybe it should be an individual issue?
It is inconvenient and time-consuming to have to go to the menu and submenu each time I want to to accept or reject a change.
context menu (right click) accept/reject functionality is sort of handled in issue 6191
*** Issue 76208 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
*** Issue 86155 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on my owner to the owner "requirements".
Concretely, the Accept/Reject dialog needs: - a way of advancing to the next change without effecting an action on the current change (e.g., a next or skip button) - a way of backing up to the previous change (I am reviewing a 500 page document and i need to do this all the time - huge productivity loss) - a way to undo the previous reject/accept without losing the focus on the list - a way to lessen the width of the dialog, insofar as it blocks a lot of territory and most of the Comment column is useless - the dialog almost always opens without the vertical scroll bar and the buttons, which only appear when the window is resized - sometimes items are skipped and sometimes not - this flaky behavior needs to be fixed. Some say this is due to a corrupted file, but that does not explain the behavior.
I agree with jcarberry on these points and add my comments in []: - a way of advancing to the next change without effecting an action on the current change (e.g., a next or skip button) [many software have this sorted out quite well: Unison File Synchroniser for example by Benjamin Pierce; many merge/diff programs like Meld and WinDiff: all done by simple keystrokes. The Accept/Reject dialog needs to be non-modal, and even never take focus.] - sometimes items are skipped and sometimes not - this flaky behavior needs to be fixed. Some say this is due to a corrupted file, but that does not explain the behavior. [Not sure if this is related, but the 'resolution' of changes is far too granular. An editor of my current document has made many changes, but for some reason LO has partitioned his changes (even when part of a continuous sentence) into many changes. e.g. the added sentence "Our combined research efforts provide greater insight into the subsurface temperature distribution, and the processes and mechanisms that control heat flow." is not seen by LO as one change, but three! Why? There seems no reason to it. Great loss of productivity having to separately manage cases like this (and there are many).] I'd also add: ** I have assigned a keyboard shortcut to "Accept Change". When using the menu item or this shortcut the next nearest change (forward in the document) could be highlighted under some sort of "Express review" mode.