Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 21424
Compare documents shows the changes in the second document instead of the current one
Last modified: 2013-02-07 22:38:42 UTC
Document comparison (Edit->Compare document) is non-intuitive. Instead of showing the changes that are needed to current document to make it like the second document it shows the opposite. This has the nasty effect that when user finishes comparing two files and doesn't want to make any changes to original file and selects "Reject All" (think cancel). In worst case user then presses "Save" before noticing that the original document has changed. I can think of few ways to fix this: 1. Change the comparison order. I would like it this way but it would just make it difficult for those who are used to do "Accept All". 2. Add Cancel-button that returns the document back to original. 3. Open differences into new document so that clicking "Save" opens "Save as"-dialog instead of overwriting original document.
confirmed on 1.1.0
Reassigned to ES
To Uxer Experience for evaluation
Will somebody please fix this? It's annoyed me at least as long as this complaint has been up. I don't care which order the comparison operation works in, as long as it's more clearly labelled in the UI. Since this feature has been backwards for so long, it probably can't be changed at this point because it would mess up everyone who's learned it the way it is now. However, there might be some merit in changing it since we still have a minority market share and MS Office does it the other way around (one less thing for converts to complain about). So, in order of preference, here are the solutions I suggest: - Fix the backwardness entirely, and make it so that to compare two documents the user opens the older document, and then selects the newer revision from Edit > Compare Documents. - Offer a choice while viewing the document to see either "Changes from file1.odt to file2.odt" or "Changes from file2.odt to file1.odt" so that the order in which the user opened the files doesn't matter. Also offer "just file1.odt" and "just file2.odt" the way MS Office does (equivalent to "Final document only" and "Original document only", but adding the filenames makes it much clearer which document is which). If the filenames are the same, show differences in the path, e.g. "The document in /home/user/e-mail attachments" and "The document in /home/user/Documents". - Show the filenames alongside hilighted edits, to make it really clear whether a bit of text is from file1.odt or file2.odt . - Provide both options by modifying the the file chooser dialogue for Edit > Compare Documents. It would be awesome if the dialogue said "the document I am selecting is [Older] [Newer] than the current one" and let the user pick the default behaviour, so that those of us who use both OpenOffice and MSOffice can make them behave the same.
I would like to vot for that, but issue 69811 still doesn't allow me...
I would like to vote for that, but issue 69811 still doesn't allow me...
To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on my owner to the owner "requirements".
Updated summary.
*** Issue 112122 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***