Sometimes, you want to keep some comment in a document, but have it show as your own comment; or even - as a comment by a third party. Other times, you want to edit a comment - but if you do, it still appears as somebody else's, while you likely want to make it your own. This is already "possible" today, in a crooked way: * Change your user details to the desired change author details * Copy the comment contents * Delete the comment * Insert a new comment as "yourself" * Paste the comment contents * Change your user details back but this is silly. Instead, we should be able to change the comment author directly: 1. Via the context menu(s) of a comment 2. (Perhaps) when inserting a comment, with an "Insert comment as..." command 3. (Perhaps) via some mechanism to switch all comments by a certain author to be by a different author.
(In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #0) > Sometimes, you want to keep some comment in a document, but have it show as > your own comment... This makes not much sense to me. Pretending to be the author of a comment should rather be avoided (bug 161978) or alternatively indicated clearly. Technically it might be a piece of cake to modify the <dc:creator> content, even with a macro.
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #1) > This makes not much sense to me. Pretending to be the author of a comment > should rather be avoided (bug 161978) or alternatively indicated clearly. _Inadvertently_ assuming another author's identity should be avoided. When the user actually wants to do so, they should be able to. When does this happen? Examples: 1. User had not yet filled in their user info, comments are shown as being by anonymous 2. User has an error or missing field in their user info, comment author has wrong/partial info 3. User identifies differently at home and at work, wants to replace one "author" with another version of themselves. 4. User got comments from an author whose identity they do not want to disclose. 5. User's personal information has changed, e.g. changed their name during marriage, they want to update their comments. 6. User wants to expand on the comment of another author (and comments are not multi-author), with attribution being non-critical. > Technically it might be a piece of cake to modify the <dc:creator> content, > even with a macro. Good, then maybe it's an EasyHack?
(In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #2) > 1. ... 6. All good example but I still disagree about messing with meta data. If an extension handles this, fine for me.
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #3) > (In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #2) > All good example but I still disagree about messing with meta data. Why is it a problem to edit the name of the author of the entire document, when it is easy to replace the name of the author of a comment? These names are not proofs-of-authorship. They're just pieces of text in the ODT. And Writer is an ODT editor, so it should be able to edit those pieces of text. IMNSHO.
(In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #2) > 1. User had not yet filled in their user info, comments are shown as being > by anonymous > 2. User has an error or missing field in their user info, comment author has > wrong/partial info > 3. User identifies differently at home and at work, wants to replace one > "author" with another version of themselves. > 4. User got comments from an author whose identity they do not want to > disclose. > 5. User's personal information has changed, e.g. changed their name during > marriage, they want to update their comments. > 6. User wants to expand on the comment of another author (and comments are > not multi-author), with attribution being non-critical. In all these cases, extending the comments text or replying to the comment would work just as fine, and also it makes clear to others why something has changed.
(In reply to Cor Nouws from comment #5) > In all these cases, extending the comments text or replying to the comment > would work just as fine Maybe I'm missing your point? The desired outcome is a comment by the current author, and no comment by another author. Your suggestions don't achieve that outcome.
Hi Eyal, (In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #6) > Maybe I'm missing your point? The desired outcome is a comment by the > current author, and no comment by another author. Your suggestions don't > achieve that outcome. Yes, my point is that your examples (apart from one, that can be solved by deleting a comment) all have the intention to show that the 'to be re-attributed' comment is from author X.. When author X simply adds a comment to the comment to show that, she/he's done, and there is not a chance of confusion over what happened with the comments (someone might notice). But..
(In reply to Cor Nouws from comment #7) > When author X simply adds a > comment to the comment to show that, she/he's done, and there is not a > chance of confusion over what happened with the comments (someone might > notice). First, there is absolutely some confusion, or at least clutter, as multiple comments are more confusing/cluttering than one comment. But that's not the point... the point is that what you suggest is an _undesired_ outcome in all those cases I mentioned. Specifically (by use case number): 1. User does not want readers to see that unattributed comments had been made (nor for them to wonder who made the attributed ones and who made the unattributed ones). 2. User does not want readers to know they had had a mistake in their personal info 3. User does not want readers to know which changes they made at work and which at home. 4. User does not want readers to know about the existence of the extra author. got comments from an author whose identity they do not want to disclose. 5. User does not want readers to be acknowledged by their pre-marital name, or pre-sex-change name etc. 6. Here, the undesired outcome is the splitting into two comments. It's at nitpick-level here - the extra comment could say "continuing author XYZ's comment, blah blah blah" - which is not terrible. But what the author wanted is to avoid this. User wants to expand on the comment of another author (and comments are not multi-author), with attribution being non-critical.
We discussed the topic in the design meeting. The use case might be reasonable but not every possible function should be implemented. The integrity of authorship outweighs the flexibility and convenience. => WF Nevertheless this is just the recommendation for the core application. The feature can easily implemented per extension.
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #9) > The integrity of authorship outweighs the flexibility and > convenience. => WF There is no integrity of authorship, Heiko. The author information (for comments and other bits of the document) are nothing more than a statement that the last author of the document wishes to make. Everyone can write a document and claim to be me, or you, or anyone; and add comments by Cor, or Stuart, or Sahil or anyone else. The thing to protect against is the possibility of people messing up the authorship information _accidentally_. > The use case might be reasonable but not every possible function should be > implemented. Not "every possible function", but functions which either: 1. Cover reasonable, non-niche use cases (especially if there are many of them), or 2. Address the need to be able to edit aspects of the ODT format (in this case, authorship information of comments) in this case, both criteria are met. I request this be reopened.
Seems duplicate of bug 99698 to me, same need to change Author name. Only, I proposed to easily change author name that is picked by future comments, not already created comments.
(In reply to Timur from comment #11) The issues are at least related. Commenting there.