Microsoft Office Word offers toggles for showing or hiding two kinds of (tracked) changes: Insertions/Deletions, and Formatting. This, orthogonally to how changes are displayed (inline or in margin "balloons"). We should also allow this separate toggling. In fact, we could consider allowing a more complex selection of which changes are visible. I would suggest: 1. Additions/Deletions 2. Direct Formatting 3. Switching of styles for stretches of text, pages, lists etc. 4. Changes to the definition of Styles 5. Changes to list numbers <- Those can be direct, by choosing the first number of a list; but can also be indirect, due to changes Note that not all categories currently have any visual indications: (2.), (3.), (4.) seem not to. See also bug 157098.
Why? Hopefully not because MS is doing.
I can imagine e.g. some reviewers only caring about the actual contents but leaving the formatting to someone else. I see it as a good feature for collaborative work where different people have different roles. However, I don't think we need such granularity. Style/formatting changes vs content is enough in my opinion.
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #1) > Why? Because sometime I want to see the places where the text changed and don't care about the styling, and sometimes I want to see the places where the style changed and I don't care about the text.
(In reply to Stéphane Guillou (stragu) from comment #2) > I can imagine e.g. some reviewers only caring about the actual contents but > leaving the formatting to someone else. I see it as a good feature for > collaborative work where different people have different roles. > However, I don't think we need such granularity. Style/formatting changes vs > content is enough in my opinion. I'll first say that non-granular visibility would already be a big improvement. I believe the granularity is merited, because: * Without granularity, the amount of displayed changes could be overwhelming; with it, the changes can be considered more piecemeal. * The UI locus of change indicators is different: For text, it's the text itself (though it could also be balloons); for paragraphs it's the line in the margin and maybe balloons; for definitions-of-styles - it will likely be in the Styles sidebar; etc.
We discussed the topic in the design meeting. The use case is clear, a reviewer caring about content not formatting. And while tools > options > writer > changes allows to set every type to [None] the change is highlighted anyway. We should add controls in the sidebar and UNO commands for the main menu to hide track changes fine-grained, maybe replacing the current entire show/hide function. In addition, the margin information needs to be clearly separated (and improved) so this information could be shown too optionally.