record changes weakness compared to m$

users
#1

Readers,

Have done a bug report on both LO and AOO, about the 'changes' feature
of the word processor. (It's excellent that there are multiple
products available to produce ODF files, but I digress). There are
many bugs concerning this feature, which is surprising.

In the typical collaborative environment, the superior functionality
of m$ "track changes" makes the possibility to use LO unrealistic.

Suppose LO is used to create an original odt document (the preferred
option of course). When that file is distributed to m$ users, the
functionality of 'changes' in LO will probably be considered to be
weak and people will be justified to ask: "please send an m$ word
document".

What is the experience of others distributing odt documents to m$ users?

Alternatively, the "realpolitik" option is to use LO to create an m$
word document, but as commented before, such an option merely
perpetuates the proliferation of m$ at the direct cost to odf.

Which leads to the next question: is the priority to improve the
feature of LO such that 'changes' in odt format is superior to 'track
changes' in m$ and that when odt documents are distributed, m$ users
can perform simple tasks such as recording document changes?

Or is the priority for LO to be compatible with m$, so that m$ word
continues to be the de facto standard?

#2

Hi :slight_smile:
imo both, or all 3.

A few people that i share documents with have been persuaded into installing or already have OpenOffice or LO.  I have installed LO on all the machines at work.  People generally remain MS users but every once in a while they find documents open in LO.

My own documents on the office network are in ODF and when i get time to update internal documents i try to switch them to ODF if there is time and if the documents are likely to be used again soon.  It's usually best done by starting a fresh document and copy&pasting unformattted text in and then reformatting.  People often make a hopeless mess and do weird things quite erratically.  A fresh start helps normalise them and since they are done on LO less craziness jumps in randomly.

When i need to share with people outside the office i use "Save As ..." to create a "98/2000/Xp" (= .doc) and if i have time i create a Pdf for them.  It doesn't take long and often impresses people.  If they need a printable version i make the Pdf with lossless compression.

The "track changes" thing is far too advanced for most office workers i know of.  When i tried to get people into it they complained that all the red crossings out and different colours was all toooo confusing.

Generally i think bug-reports are worked on to make LO better in it's own right but that a LOT of effort goes into trying to pander to the needs of MS users that people share with.  Hopefully as LO usage continues to increase exponentially it continues to become easier to share ODFs.  Then the need to try to follow MS's whims will decrease naturally.

I still think it's more important to get LO out there first, or AOO or any other program that uses ODF as it's native format.  ODF uptake is 2nd, for me.  It seems to be working well that way, for me.

It would be interesting to hear other people's thoughts or experiences. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#3

Hi :slight_smile:
imo both, or all 3.

A few people that i share documents with have been persuaded into installing or already have OpenOffice or LO. I have installed LO on all the machines at work. People generally remain MS users but every once in a while they find documents open in LO.

My own documents on the office network are in ODF and when i get time to update internal documents i try to switch them to ODF if there is time and if the documents are likely to be used again soon. It's usually best done by starting a fresh document and copy&pasting unformattted text in and then reformatting. People often make a hopeless mess and do weird things quite erratically. A fresh start helps normalise them and since they are done on LO less craziness jumps in randomly.

When i need to share with people outside the office i use "Save As ..." to create a "98/2000/Xp" (= .doc) and if i have time i create a Pdf for them. It doesn't take long and often impresses people. If they need a printable version i make the Pdf with lossless compression.

The "track changes" thing is far too advanced for most office workers i know of. When i tried to get people into it they complained that all the red crossings out and different colours was all toooo confusing.

I have never seen anyone use this feature in MSO (or LO). IMHO most people find the it confusing or annoying. What seemed to work best for most collaborative documents was to have one person be responsible for final edits after getting input from all the others and the other participants be responsible for a section of the document.

#4

Unfortunately, where I work, this feature is used heavily ( and yest it is
really, really annoying) but is considered a must have for our environment.

Bobby Kneisel
Owner
KTech Solutions
bobby.kneisel@ktechsolutionsllc.com
614.398.0999

#5

Yes, but sometimes it is essential. e.g. I worked as an editor
for technical papers that Chinese PhD students were going
to submit to journals or conferences. Mostly they came to
me as latex files, but there were some in .docx. The writer
or the journal chose the format. I gave the latex files back
as .doc and the .docx as .docx, both with changes shown.

Tracking & showing changes was an essential feature for
that work. So was adding lots of comments.

These were difficult files; lots of math, tables & diagrams,
some with a two-column layout, many with comments in
Chinese, some with Chinese in the text, e. g. papers on
multilingual applications. It was also a complicated
environment; students all had Chinese versions of
software, mostly XP & MS Office, but the papers I
dealt with were in English.

In that context, L-O mostly worked right but it was
flakier than a sheepdog with dandruff. Unreadable
comments -- either students not being able to read
mine or both mine & student replies coming out as
rubbish when a file came back to me -- were the
worst annoyance, but there were plenty of others.

Some .docx files LO could not read at all and
others it mangled formatting. I gave up and
edited those with MS Office.

#6

In the legal field, the "track changes" feature is used a lot. Typically, one lawyer will draft a document, and send it off to another for revision. The document will go back and forth several times, with each lawyer adding his own changes. The "track changes" feature is most important. It actually works quite well, with each lawyer accepting or rejecting the changes of the previous lawyer before adding his own. I never had any problems using this feature in Word.

Sad to say, in my legal work, I long ago gave up trying to share documents between Word and OOo or LO. There are too many small differences in the way the programs work (page styles vs. section breaks for example), that files end up being a mess when translated back and forth between the two.

As somewhat of a geek, I found it easier for me to simply defer to what my counterpart was using. I had Word, Wordperfect, and OOo all on my system and I used each depending on who my recipient was going to be.

Now that I'm semi-retired, most of my writing is recreational and what I do professionally, I generally don't have to share, so I can be more free to use whatever I want.

Virgil

#7

Unfortunately, where I work, this feature is used heavily ( and yest it is
really, really annoying) but is considered a must have for our environment.

Bobby Kneisel

I wouldn't call it 'must-have' in my environment (academic) yet but I am very frequently confronted with it, e.g. today a colleague offered to a document back to me with 'changes' on; I reminded him I can't work well that way.

in my case, I also don't _like_ the feature. so much the worse for me.

F.

#8

...
And the link to that bug report is... ?

#9

For what it's worth, I'm in an academic environment and I use the record-changes feature heavily with students, collaborators and colleagues, some of whom use LO/OO but most of whom use MS Word and .doc files. I use LO/OO myself and usually don't have problems, except sometimes when there are lots of figures and equations. This has improved over time. I love record-changes and would be lost without it.

- Robert

#10

I trust there's no surprise that the OASIS Standard ODF documents are developed and maintained as ODF documents. Tracked changes are critical to the work of the ODF TC and the review processes that the work goes through.

There is a subcommittee of the OASIS ODF TC working on extension/replacement of the tracked changes features for ODF 1.3. That is in response to those who find the limitations of the current standard and its implementations unacceptable. This requirement seems to emerge from users in public administration, somewhat akin to the use in law firms.

- Dennis

#11

Hi :slight_smile:
Would an acceptable work-around be to send 2 versions of the document?  The old and the new?

In 'most' (?) cases people would hopefully already have the old version, or an even older one.  Then hopefully the "Compare Documents" feature in the various different programs might provide roughly the same functionality?  Doesn't "track changes" have a way of allowing comments that show-up if you hover over a particular change?  I'm not sure of a good way to cover that sort of thing with "Compare" rather than "Track".

Is there a good word to describe the feeling you get when you are unable to tear your eyes away from something fairly horrific that intrigues you and you are keen to see how it develops but at the same time knowing that it should stop but you have no control over it although you have a nagging feeling that you should be doing something to stop it, or at least stop watching?

That is roughly how i feel about the new feature being developed to allow several people to work simultaneously on a document.  I can envisage several cases where it might be invaluable but i'm sure a lot of people will use it badly and get frustrated with any collaborative work.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#12

[... deleted text ...]

Is there a good word to describe the feeling you get when you are unable to tear your eyes away from something fairly horrific that intrigues you and you are keen to see how it develops but at the same time knowing that it should stop but you have no control over it although you have a nagging feeling that you should be doing something to stop it, or at least stop watching? 
[... deleted ...]

"rubbernecking"

not sure if it is a _good_ word for it. I also don't know if it covers quite _all_ the conditions you stipulate but it's close.

F.

#13

In this case there is no alternative but to use m$?

#14

In this case, LO could be used by the responsible person to distribute
odf documents and then do final editing. Possible, but not as
time-efficient as the software code environment whereby version
control is used, to allow simultaneous editing of code. It would be
nice if LO allowed version control (e.g. integration with a client
such as ultravnc).

#15

Hi Dennis,

This requirement seems to emerge from users in public administration, somewhat akin to the use in law firms.

I can certainly second the law firm requirement, and as a lawyer that
also has to work with French public administrations that don't use ODF,
tracking and recording changes in Word documents is often problematic.

Alex

#16

Hi :slight_smile:

That is the way we do our newsletter at work.  I use LO to pull together articles written by various different people using different programs (sadly mostly just different versions of MSO).  When we used Word for our newsletter it took ages to sort out all the strange and different messes that people made.  With LO it's easy to just paste in as unformatted and then apply suitable styles to keep all the articles consistent with each other.  That Alt arrow trick has been a huge help in making this latest one MUCH better but even before that LO was a huge help in getting a superior output more quickly.  
Then my boss prints a copy and marks changes he wants in biro.  I make them and then print another copy for my other boss to make more changes in biro.  Then he confers with the 1st boss and then the 1st boss tells me the changes the other one wanted.

Track changes could possibly be a lot more efficient imo but only if it works across the LO/MSO divide.  Still it's 3 months until i have to worry about it again and that typically means huge improvements in LO.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#17

The documents I think that are being discussed are legal briefs, reports, etc. where true version control is probably overkill.

If I am writing code I almost certainly would not use LO but either an IDE or an enhanced text editor. The formating I need is to highlight syntax and possible syntactical errors as I enter the code.

#18

In my experience, the Compare Documents feature is very unsatisfactory. For one thing, it will often flag an entire paragraph as having changed when only a word or two in the paragraph has changed.

- Robert

#19

Understood, but the point being made is that instead of 'record
changes', LO offers the same version control functionality for odf
documents as plain text (e.g. LaTeX, or any programming language).

#20

For LO (RSS feed):
https://www.libreoffice.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&bug_status=VERIFIED&component=Writer&product=LibreOffice&query_format=advanced&short_desc=changes&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&title=Bug%20List&ctype=atom

For OO: (RSS feed):
https://issues.apache.org/ooo/buglist.cgi?bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=CONFIRMED&bug_status=ACCEPTED&bug_status=REOPENED&bug_status=VERIFIED&component=editing&product=word%20processor&query_format=advanced&resolution=---&short_desc=changes&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&title=Bug%20List&ctype=atom