Description: When you receive a Writer file with lots of long comments, it gets impossible to reply to (or even read) them. It would be great to add a "review pane" on the bottom of the page so every time you click on a comment in your document (top pane) the 'review pane' is updated and shows you the comment in full below. Also there you can reply to the comment. Both panes have the same width so it is much more comfortable to work with an arbitrary number of comments from different authors. Steps to Reproduce: You have a file with lots of long comments, possibly with replies from different authors. And you have to reply to these comments. Actual Results: You have to do all this 'comments review' on the margin of the document... it easily becomes a nightmare. Expected Results: with a Review Pane you can use the full width of the screen (same as the document) to read and reply to each comment. Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: No Additional Info: In a way this 'Review pane' would be equivalent to open a 2nd window with the same document, only that you are not writing on the text of the document but on its comments
Created attachment 191367 [details] this is how I imagine it
Thanks for the suggestion. Heiko, I thought there was some "comment sidebar" proposal somewhere?
Created attachment 191371 [details] Comments sidebar in OnlyOffice (In reply to Stéphane Guillou (stragu) from comment #2) > Heiko, I thought there was some "comment sidebar" proposal somewhere? A comment sidebar would be very much welcome. Are there any mockups? I would love to see something similar to the Comment sidebar from OnlyOffice (see attached image).
This idea is not new and has been rejected in bug 106316. The option to display comments as pop-ups still exists in bug 101714 however. Essentially the recommendation is to use the Navigator, and to improve this workflow. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 106316 ***
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #4) > This idea is not new and has been rejected in bug 106316. The option to > display comments as pop-ups still exists in bug 101714 however. Essentially > the recommendation is to use the Navigator, and to improve this workflow. TBH the existing Navigator is very good at navigating the various parts of the document (Headings, Images, Shapes, Tables, etc... and even comments). However, when it comes to commenting, replying to comments, resolving comments, etc the Navigator will never be enough for these use cases. As a user, I would love to see a dedicated Comments pane.
(In reply to Rafael Lima from comment #5) > As a user, I would love to see a dedicated Comments pane. What exactly makes it necessary to have comments in an extra deck?
Created attachment 191395 [details] Replying to a comment in the "comments pane" (OnlyOffice) (In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #6) > What exactly makes it necessary to have comments in an extra deck? A "Comments deck" makes it a lot easier to manage comments in a document. To understand that, think from the perspective of someone who adds maybe 100+ comments to a document, then send it to a student/collaborator. And later receive the document back for further review. In this scenario, it becomes relevant to: 1) Sort comments by date, author 2) Filter comments by content, by reply status 3) Edit comments and reply to them in the "document pane" itself (see attached image; the UI fits much more text and to me is more convenient to use) 4) Mark comments as resolved or delete them 5) View only resolved/unresolved comments 6) Etc... In summary, a Comments pane would allow to manage comments and is focused on users who heavily comment and collaborate while developing documents.
I agree with Rafael Lima. The functionality being suggested is not to navigate through the comments but to comfortably work with them (mostly reply to them) in a space that is not constrained by the margins. The pop-up functionality may be useful only for the visibility of the comment, but it does not bring any benefit to the management of comments as a Review Pane (where you can easily go back and forth between the comment, your reply, other comments, other replies, etc). Maybe it is worth mentioning why this is very important (and other office suites have noted) and might not be immediately evident. In 'normal' academic writing (eg. scientific articles), one of the keystones is the review process. This process consists of a number of people ('reviewers') adding comments to your text, asking for clarifications, suggesting different things, etc. Addressing those comments is a whole task itself. It is not just "navigate, then accept/reject" as in 'Track changes'. It requires that you thoughtfully consider all the comments, and the reply in a organized fashion where the final (new) manuscript has to make sense and be an improved version. It is not uncommon that this process of 'reviewing' is equivalent (in terms of amount of work) to generating a new manuscript (hopefully better than the previous one, and taking into account all comments). Some comments include quite a few previous statements to situate the reader on where the comment is going to. Sometimes comments from different reviewers are contradictory (and many times there are not written successively). So the person that has to manage all the comments really needs a dedicated space as the Reviewing Pane (or comments panel, whatever name is finally decided). It is very different from GIT-like workflow where you change some lines and then can see clearly what the changes are and decide if accept or not. It is like writing the whole software every time with new user requirements!. Therefore, I advocate to re open this and at least think why other office suits have this functionality instead of deciding that is not needed.