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Again, do not read much into this, yet. And do choose only those that are really important to you.

This is just *my* need: I don't need the elaborate collaborative features. Basically, I need: get a student paper, write comments/markups, return. If the student uses Mellel, good. If the student can tolerate a pdf with the markups/comments clearly indicated, fine. If the student needs a word/rtf version then the Mellel markup should export cleanly, but I wouldn't need the elaborate author/date/time etc. stuff.
Put another way, I'd be happy with deletions indicated as strikeouts, additions indicated by some color and comments as marginalia (with I want too!).
Others may have more elaborate needs.

Let me just add my 2c here. Whilst I hate the way track changes is handled in Word/Pages, the MOST important thing for me is that track changes in Mellel would be compatible with Word track changes.....

Track changes is the ONLY reason why I still have Word on my computer - all the collaborators have yet to see light (despite being on Macs)!

ddauerbach wrote:This is just *my* need: I don't need the elaborate collaborative features. Basically, I need: get a student paper, write comments/markups, return. If the student uses Mellel, good. If the student can tolerate a pdf with the markups/comments clearly indicated, fine. If the student needs a word/rtf version then the Mellel markup should export cleanly, but I wouldn't need the elaborate author/date/time etc. stuff.
Put another way, I'd be happy with deletions indicated as strikeouts, additions indicated by some color and comments as marginalia (with I want too!).
Others may have more elaborate needs.

It seems that a "flatter," clean way (similar, in a way, to written comments on paper) would have been the way you'd like it. Am I right?

kga1978 wrote:Let me just add my 2c here. Whilst I hate the way track changes is handled in Word/Pages, the MOST important thing for me is that track changes in Mellel would be compatible with Word track changes.....

Track changes is the ONLY reason why I still have Word on my computer - all the collaborators have yet to see light (despite being on Macs)!

You're option 2, then, without the "like."

I think that a lot can be improved to the usual interfaces to track changes (Word, Pages), but first and foremost it is important to have comprehensive, roundtrip compatibility with Word. As pointed independently in other postings by a handful of users (myself included) track changes with no compatibility is useless for collaboration.

My suggestion, is to replicate functionality, make it perfectly compatible, and then improve on a 2.8.1 or 2.9 release. Yes, there's a lot to improve, but it's important to have a working solution sooner than later.

aechallu wrote:I think that a lot can be improved to the usual interfaces to track changes (Word, Pages), but first and foremost it is important to have comprehensive, roundtrip compatibility with Word. As pointed independently in other postings by a handful of users (myself included) track changes with no compatibility is useless for collaboration.

My suggestion, is to replicate functionality, make it perfectly compatible, and then improve on a 2.8.1 or 2.9 release. Yes, there's a lot to improve, but it's important to have a working solution sooner than later.

As this is a collaboration tool, compatibility is, of course, essential. The option named above strictly touch on issues that are not related to that such as how to get in and out of track changes mode, messy appearance of changes, and so on. Getting in and out you need to be compatible, but that doesn't mean that in needs to look back while working.

Ori Redler wrote:
It seems that a "flatter," clean way (similar, in a way, to written comments on paper) would have been the way you'd like it. Am I right?

That would certainly be the way I like it: I consider it also real lazy editing if students/colleagues just have to click "accept" and they're done (in some cases that's precisely what they want...). In my experience, there are always better options, and one shouldn't be too easily satisfied about hastily suggested corrections. And people tend to focus exclusively on sentences, skipping a good read-through of the whole paragraph.

On the whole, commenting/revising/correcting someone else's text is, for me at least, quite a complex procedure: you want to avoid rewriting stuff yourself, or intervene in an author's personal style. Therefore I prefer the software behind it, to be simple.

The best system I could imagine, is one where you can refer to line numbers/words much like bookmarks, and comment/suggest improvements in a separate window/module (not like the balloons in word!). Very much like in the old days, I know. I'm a creature of habit...

For me, a Word/Pages-style track changes feature would be enough: everything else would just be gravy. Perfect Word compatibility would be a delight, but that's the extra 20%, not the 80%.

For me just a marking on either side of the line which has changed would be sufficient,
in order to make one carefully read the text / line(s) which have changed.

All the fancy W*rd stuff slows down an application so much and makes the text almost unreadable.
Furthermore I have found that one tend to forget to accept the changes. If I have a large document it only gets detected once it goes to print.
Best Regards
Fliegenderrobert

Thanks to all who commented and all who voted. Interesting stuff and lots to think about for us.