tora - Takamichi Akiyama wrote: > Hi, > > There seems room to enhance the usability around a file lock system of 3.0. > > A division runs a file server for its staffs. > 1. A general manger sends an e-mail to staffs to see a document in the file > server. > 2. User A opens the file with OpenOffice.org 3.0 as usual. > 3. User B opens the file with OpenOffice.org 3.0 and faces a dialog window > saying > > Document file 'xxx.odt' is locked for editing by: > user_a (mm.dd.yyyy hh:mm) > Open document read only or open a copy of the document for editing. > [Open Read Only] [Open Copy] [Cancel] > > 4. User C opens the file with OpenOffice.org 3.0 and faces the same dialog. > 5. User D opens ..., and blames User A. > > User A did not intend to edit it or even bother anybody else, but just wanted > to SEE it. > > Models > "Look before editing it" model - once used by legacy version control > systems: rcs, sccs.
OOo has an option to make a document read-only by default. And users can open any document read-only by setting the check mark in the file picker. So if user A didn't do that, maybe user D is right with blaming him? ;-) Another (not yet existing option) would be to have an explicit "open read-only" menu entry or toolbar button, but that might be an exaggeration. Maybe a toolbar button that is invisible by default? > "Merge after editing it" model - used by recent version control systems: > CVS, Subversion, git. > Current implemention of 3.0 could be considered "Lock before editing it" > model. The reason why we don't allow for "merge after editing" is that our change tracking is not complete in most (all?) applications. Fixing that would be a major effort, so it is in concurrency with all other major efforts we still have on the list. > Interoperability with other tools > Several ODF tools - ODFToolkit, OODoc in Perl, ... - work with ODF files. > They, however, do not work with a lock file of 3.x: .~lock.xxx.odt# . So they can fix that. :-) We can make this a kind of "public API" of OOo, if that helps. But before we do that, there should be some interest from any other ODF based application. Regards, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer (mba) - Project Lead OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS Please don't reply to "[email protected]". I use it for the OOo lists and only rarely read other mails sent to it. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
