Talk:Notes2

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General

Hope you did read Caolans blog http://blogs.linux.ie/caolan/2007/03/12/notesmarginnotes-in-sw/

Peter

Yes, I think they (the developers) did notice it, because it was mentioned very early on GSOC Better Notes Functionality.

--ChristophNoack 00:44, 26 September 2007 (CEST)

Complex Structures

Sometimes, it makes sense to attach the same note to 2 or more text-positions. Instead of 2 different notes, it really makes sense to have the same note point to the 2 positions, e.g. IF the comment points to some inconsistencies between the 2 paragraphs.

Discoleo 22:39, 16 August 2007 (CEST)

When I edit some text, this is something I also thought about. During the discussion on how to set the Notes Anchors I realized how hard this is to implement and to manage for the user. Example: Lets have a note at position A and a note at position B (in another section). But how to represent the note? Should we draw a Note Connector Line from position B to A (not really obvious and clear) or should we provide the a Notes Window with the same content (this is something the user does not find in the real world, because he does not write on one sheet of paper and on another one the content changes too).

Proposal: So my proposal would be to just "link" from one note to another note. Think about something like a hyperlink which could easily be added from the e.g. the Navigator which - even today - features creating links from objects (e.g. drag-and-drop). Okay, this may require some additional work for the user (cross-reference both notes), but provides much more flexibility for other tasks. The biggest advantage is, that it would make use of a concept that is already available in Writer.

Does that fit to your needs?

--ChristophNoack 00:33, 26 September 2007 (CEST)

Note Categories

Tags

I would like to be able to tag the notes: each note will have a category, so that notes in the same category are grouped together, e.g. 'ToDO', 'ERRORS', ...

This makes conceptual reviewing more easier.

Hierarchical View

This borrows some concepts from the 'FreeMind' mind mapping software.

It makes sense in a more complex document to organize hierarchically the notes for easier tracking of changes and inconsistencies. The 'Note Tags' discussed in the previous paragraph are another useful feature with the same purpose.

Discoleo 22:39, 16 August 2007 (CEST)

Thanks for your proposals. I hope it is okay if I will describe you demands a bit more abstract and say that "the user wishes to define criteria to sort and filter the notes". Tagging and a hierarchical view could be powerful implementations for solving this user requirement. Maybe we have to start with little less complex implementations to serve even those users, who are not too familiar with those concepts - I would like to have a balance of "just works" and "serves even professional writers". Let me introduce some of our ideas to you how to achieve that:

  1. Make notes searchable: the user would be able to find "keywords he can define for himself. Although this is manual work for the author, the effort for implementing this seems manageable. And, it would be "compatible" with the export of data in e.g. the Microsoft Word format.
  2. Filter notes (idea): I'm sure that many people will rate the importance of comments by e.g. their author (the boss, the expert). Therefore it would be desirable to filter notes according to their author. A general filter functionality would this make possible. The advantage is, that the information is already present in the Notes Property Data and does not require further user interaction like tagging.
  3. Prioritize notes or set a work status (idea): This very close to your ideas. The user could prioritize notes by assigning e.g. the information "important" to them; or use a kind of work status (e.g. "idea", "todo", "completed"). As far as I understand, the difference to your proposals is, that I would prefer to provide a set of pre-defined tags and a flat structure. Then, the filter function could be used to find notes both "important" and "todo" without necessity of real hierarchy.

More information on that is available at Other Ideas filed under "Status Icons", "Task Management", "Sort and Filter Notes". I think, that this order fits to the strongest needs of users and - simultaneously - is not too complex. What do you think?

--ChristophNoack 00:16, 26 September 2007 (CEST)

Specific Issues

Print

First of all, thank you Maximilian that you are going to take on to solve this important issue in OpenOffice. Frequently, I have to review articles changed and commented by other people in a document. This is actually the only reason, why I have to switch (sometimes) to WORD. And here my point: Quite often I print out the document (including all comments etc.) in order to incorporate the suggestions made. Hence, I would be very happy having the possibility to print out the document nicely including all comments. Thank you Gerald

Thanks for your input, we are fully aware that the area of printing needs some rework. Hopefully, this can be done for the 3.0 version of OpenOffice.org

Introduction date?

I actually hoped some of the imporoved Notes code to be released by 2.4 and then fixed/improved on by 2.4.x, as I had huge hopes for better Notes in 2.4. -martg 15:05, 16 November 2007 (CET)

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