Bug 160497 - FR: Print (or export) only tracked changes
Summary: FR: Print (or export) only tracked changes
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
7.6.5.2 release
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL: https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/is-ther...
Whiteboard:
Keywords: needsUXEval
Depends on:
Blocks: Track-Changes
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Reported: 2024-04-02 23:54 UTC by Joseph Morris
Modified: 2024-10-23 13:31 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

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Crash report or crash signature:


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Description Joseph Morris 2024-04-02 23:54:21 UTC
Description:
In Microsoft Word, it is possible to print a list of tracked changes only, without the rest of the document. See the first point of this blog post, which gives a screenshot: 

https://theopendesk.com/2018/09/19/summarising-tracked-changes-word/comment-page-1/

If there are many changes to a long document, this can help a reviewer quickly see the edit history: who edited what, and when. Please consider implementing something similar in Writer. 

It would be really awesome if the output was to an ods file (or something else import-able into Calc), with each edit on a separate line, with columns for "Author", "Edit Time", "Changed Text","Added/Deleted" (i.e, what happened to the "Changed Text"), and whatever the best positional information available is (e.g., character position). That way one could then sort to see the most salient information: changes in chronological order, changes by a particular person, changes in document order, etc. That would I suppose have to be some sort of export, rather than part of the printing functionality. 

If you were doing it as a print output, there is similar functionality of "print comments only" in the "LibreOffice" tab of the print dialog, so if that were the method you choose (i.e., print rather than export), a checkbox/dropdown there ("print changes only") would seem most logical UI. 

Steps to Reproduce:
n/a

Actual Results:
n/a

Expected Results:
n/a


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:
n/a
Comment 2 Dieter 2024-04-21 10:48:02 UTC
I was very surprised, that I couldn't find a similiar report. Personally I won't see an advantage in printed list (using the overviw in sidebar or manage changes dialog is better for me), but of course, there might be different opinions. So let's ask design-team.
Comment 3 Heiko Tietze 2024-04-22 08:45:21 UTC
I wonder if you are aware of the sidebar deck that lists all TC.

Besides, printing sounds very niche (and we have the responsibility of conservation) but export to Calc might make sense. However, assuming you can sort in Writer's sidebar (just filtering for now), what is a spreadsheet good for then?

And last but not least the extension on ask.libreoffice looks promising, if we decide this to be a special use case for only a few users.
Comment 4 Eyal Rozenberg 2024-05-08 23:01:10 UTC
I support this feature request, or rather: I support the ability to export the list of tracked changes.

(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #3)
> printing sounds very niche (and we have the responsibility of
> conservation)

Disagree. If it is not niche to go over the tracked changes (e.g. in a sidebar), it is not niche to export/print them.

Export could be:

* to a Writer document with the changes in sequence - in styled paragraphs.
* to a Calc table (not a CSV table, since we need the formatting), maybe.

and the export could be either into a file or into a new document. The file can then be printed.
Comment 5 Heiko Tietze 2024-05-09 06:20:31 UTC
We discussed the topic in the design meeting. The proposed macro solution seems to be the right way to tackle this niche use case.
Comment 6 Eyal Rozenberg 2024-05-09 19:24:09 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #5)
> We discussed the topic in the design meeting. The proposed macro solution
> seems to be the right way to tackle this niche use case.

1. See my last comment
2. How does the macro reproduce complex, formatted, Writer objects within that Calc spreadsheet?

Suggest reopening.
Comment 7 Vincent Lefevre 2024-10-23 12:55:22 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #3)
> I wonder if you are aware of the sidebar deck that lists all TC.

The sidebar just gives the author and the date of each change, which is completely useless: If I just distribute this list, even together with the PDF of the full document (the ODT file itself is private and must not be distributed), the users will not be able to do anything with it.

(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #5)
> We discussed the topic in the design meeting. The proposed macro solution
> seems to be the right way to tackle this niche use case.

Macros are typically disabled for security reasons.
Comment 8 Heiko Tietze 2024-10-23 13:31:52 UTC
Feel free to reopen.