From: Alan Horkan (horkana_at_maths.tcd.ie)
Date: Sun Dec 14 2003 - 18:19:27 EST
On Sun, 14 Dec 2003, Tomas Frydrych wrote:
> Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 20:41:59 -0000
> From: Tomas Frydrych <tomas_at_frydrych.uklinux.net>
> To: Omer Zak <omerz_at_actcom.co.il>
> Cc: abiword-dev_at_abisource.com
> Subject: Re: Warning that there are revisions in a document? (was: Re:
> some explanations about revisions and related stuff)
>
>
> Hi Omer,
>
> > Is it possible to display a warning that a document contains revisions?
> >
> > Possibilities:
> >
> > 1. In the titlebar of the window (together with the asterisk marking
> > whether the document has unsaved changes), display colored squares, one
> > color for each existing revision coloring.
>
> We could add something to the title bar, probably just '[revised]'
> would do; I like this suggestion.
Colours are problematic for Accessibility and Usability.
> > 2. Message in the Save/Save-as dialogs. A friendly way to display this
> > is in the form of radiobutton options - "Save with revision
> > information"/"Save without revision information", with default value
> > being the document's current status of revision information.
Adding radio buttons would require custom Save Dialogs on mutliple
platforms which increases maintaincance hassles.
> > Those options will be hidden unless and until the user turned on the
> > revision feature.
> >
> > 3. Confirmation dialog if you want to Save-as with revision information
> > (I don't like this alternative). The assumption is that Save wants to
> > save all document's information; and that Save-as will be used to
> > create a revisionless copy for distribution.
>
> I do not like this much either.
This is the kind of interuption that historically the abiword developers
have avoided, you will notice for example that there is no warning message
when saving to a file format that does not support all available
formatting.
I haven't thought of an appropriate solution myself yet although I did
discuss something similar on the list before. I'd hope that Abiword
documents would by default show all revisions and revision information
(hopefully older versions of abiword would ignore the extra markup and
just include them as extra paragraphs rather than hiding the information).
If the default was to have all this information shown I think it would
make it much harder for people to fail to realise it was there. At the
very least it obeys the programming principle "fail early fail often"
(wildly paraphrasing) and increases the likehood of such mistakes being
noticed and fixed earlier befor it is too late.
I will try to ponder this problem some more and post if I can come up with
a more substantial fully formed idea rather than trying to brainstorm
onlist.
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
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