Le 04/11/2015 20:06, Georg Baum a écrit :
Guillaume Munch wrote:
Le 03/11/2015 21:16, Georg Baum a écrit :
I don't think there is an easy solution, because it depends on the use
case. For example, in our documentation workflows \tracking_changes needs
to be the same for all users, so this should not go into the preferences.
For the other two I am not sure.
For context:
\track_changes : whether the track changes button is enabled (does not
affect the existing contents)
But it affects what happens if a change is made to the document. One author
using change tracking and the next one making changes without change
tracking is a very special case IMO. The usual case is that either all
authors or nobody uses change tracking for a particular document. For
example, in our own docs, we require everybody to use change tracking so
that the translations can be updated. Therefore it should be switched on all
the time.
My experience with multi-author collaboration and change tracking
differs. The various portions of the document tend to "belong" to one
author and an author uses change tracking depending on whether that part
belongs to them. Also, for trivial edits (typos...) they would disable
change tracking. This is from my actual experience. So we tend to switch
change tracking many times. The interface tends to concur with this
usage: it is located on a toolbar and is assigned a keyboard shortcut.
On the contrary, the use case that you mention where everybody has to
track changes at the same time seems to be due to external constraints:
change tracking is not used to facilitate multi-author collaboration,
but to facilitate translations. This use of change-tracking appears very
special to me.
In addition, what appears even more special to me is the number of times
when it produces the effects that you mention: the only times when a
per-user, per-document preference would not produce the same effect is
the very first time that the user edits the document. I am willing to
bet that that this happened fewer times overall in the past few months
for LyX's documentations than the number of times where I had to
synchronise with my co-author in the same time frame for a single
article. And in any case, having change tracking set automatically on
opening is not enough, because you still have to tell new contributors
that it is important to track changes. Or did I miss something from your
argument?
Another argument is the principle of least surprise: I think that users
would tend to assume that it is a per-user, per-document preference,
similar to the last cursor position mentioned by Vincent. Currently, it
is more confusing, in the context where change tracking is enabled
intermittently, that my co-author gets my own latest state instead of their.
I agree with Vincent: \justification is per user, and the other two are
per user, per document.
Guillaume
