Difference between revisions of "Track changes"

Revision as of 23:35, 27 March 2009

This page aims to collect some information on the track changes feature of Writer. It also aims to collect some ideas on potential improvements in this area in Writer.

Introduction

Track changes is a possibility for Writer users to keep track of the changes a user makes or other users have made to a document. All changes are recorded and are visualized in order to ease the review of a document. All those changes can be accepted or rejected by the user. Especially people, who use Writer in workgroups or who review documents of other users require and use this feature.

Writer's implementation of track changes is functional, but may need improvement in some areas, namely: Visualization of track changes, Printing of track changes, efficient detection of changes made to a document, and track changes in tables and frames.

Related issues and requirements

• Vizualization and printing:
  • Show change tracking comments inside the margin: Issue 9661 ,Issue 92154 ,Issue 88879 ,Issue 66293 , see also Notes2 CWS
  • Improvements to printing of notes (and other objects) inside the margin: Issue 767 ,Issue 61644 , see also Notes2 CWS
• Track changes functionality
  • Compare Document does not compare only differences: Issue 54195
  • Table, frame, header, footer, graphic structure (delete, insert) not changes tracked (redlining): Issue 76935

Further ideas for improvements

• Filters, such as: "Do not display any changes made earlier than my last review of the document" or "Do not display changes that are older than xx days" or "Do not display changes of person xy and person xz, because I trust them very much"
• Versioning: Display and render a version of the file with a certain set of changes applied (by author, by date) but not the others. Allow saving the rendered copy.

Google Summer of Code 2009: Improve Writer's compare function

• Ideas for Google Summer of Code 2009: Improve Writer's compare function

Competitive Analysis

• Microsoft Word XP-2007: Track changes while you edit (2009-03-14)

MS Word 2003

Microsoft Word 2003 (word processor) Word displays the changes made (deletions and format changes) in bubbles in the right margin of the page. The changes of different users are displayed in different colours. The user has the option to choose, whether he/she would like to see the changes of all other authors or only of a few of them. The pages can be printed as displayed on screen.

• EIOffice: Track changes nearly exact copy of Word 2003 functionality.
• Abiword
• KWord
• Apple Pages
• WordPerfect
• Textmaker
• GoogleDocs
• Buzzword (Adobe)

Related OpenOffice extensions

• Extension that compares two documents and vizualizes changes made between the document versions: DeltaXMLODTCompare Comparison includes tables.(2009-03-13)

Manuals on using Writer's existing track changes features

• Tutorial on using Track Changes with Writer: Change a document (Red-lining or tracking changes) (2009-03-14)

Press Coverage and blogs on track changes

• Brendan Scott’s Weblog: OOo Compare: Inadequate (2009-03-14)
• Brendan Scott’s Weblog: Wdiff compare - Good! (2009-03-20)
• Brendan Scott’s Weblog: Docdiff compare - Good! + Roundup (2009-03-24)