Personally I like the LyX note feature and use them quite allot, not only for comments for myself (or if I ever have other people work on my LyX documents), but I also use notes to disable parts of my lyx document (because it's unfinished and I don't want it showing up in the output yet, or old stuff I might want to look at again but don't want to use now). As a programmer, this notion of "Note" is exactly what you get from a "comment" in a programming language, so they are very natural for me to use (although calling them "notes" instead of "comments" did throw me off at first).
On the other hand, I often want text to be in the output to communicate to other people giving me feedback on a draft, or for myself so that it reminds me something I should change (in particular, I can search for all such notes to see what I still need to do before the final version). , The `todonotes` module provides insets for this, as well as marking text additions and deletions. The todonotes package also has many configuration options, and support for showing which author wrote which comment. Personally though I just defined my own inset that puts the text in square brackets, bright pink, and a small font. Which is probably not to most people's liking. I have however never found a need for the inbuilt "Comment" inset, it might be useful if I expect a human to read my latex source code, instead of the LyX or PDF file. I do have to say that the naming of "Note" and "Comment" is confusing, I would have named "Note" as "Comment" and "Comment" as "Backend Comment" (assuming it also works for non-LaTeX backends). Also I'd have some of the modules be loaded by default, such as the todonotes module, and title and preamble hacks. — Isaac Oscar Gariano ________________________________ From: lyx-devel <lyx-devel-boun...@lists.lyx.org> on behalf of Daniel <xraco...@gmx.de> Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2023 7:54:09 PM To: lyx-devel@lists.lyx.org <lyx-devel@lists.lyx.org> Subject: Re: Using Comment notes the right way On 2023-11-19 22:30, Richard Kimberly Heck wrote: > On 11/19/23 15:31, Daniel wrote: >> On 2023-11-19 12:20, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote: >>> Le 19/11/2023 à 07:47, Daniel a écrit : >>>>> On 2023-11-15 11:47, Daniel wrote: >>>>>> 2. Allow free spacing in Comments. That is typically a feature in >>>>>> sticky notes in other applications which is handy if one wants >>>>>> just to quickly type stuff down without bothering with special >>>>>> formatting. >>>>> >>>>> It basically offers more freedom to scribble as you like. >>>>> >>>>> Daniel >>>> >>>> And also KeepEmpty should be enabled in commnents for similar reasons. >>> >>> So you want MSWord in a box? I do not see why the feature would >>> require that. But of course it is not difficult to create a module >>> that transforms the inset in this way. >> >> I don't see what is MS Word specific about it. But if the commenting >> function of PDF readers is MS Word in a box, then maybe that is what I >> am thinking about. I guess the thought was that because the output is >> not affected anyway, it's fine to let the user choose how to write the >> comment. No need to put limits on it. >> >> But I would be already happy if there was some nice out of the box >> minimal commenting function that does not inherit the font but also >> does (maybe optionally) not affect the output. So far LyX has only LyX >> Notes (which inherit the font) and Comments (which affect the output). >> Isn't something missing? >> >> I know that a lot can be done with modules. But I am thinking about a >> common feature that seems handy in other application which LyX seems >> to be missing. It would be strange if one would have to include a >> module in order to write comments. > > I take JMarc's point to be that what you are asking for seems very > specific to your specific use case. Since it's relatively easy to create > an inset like the one you want, and there are maintenance costs, etc, > connected with adding new things, it's not clear the cost is worth the > benefit. > > Note, by the way, that the PDF modules already provide for other forms > of comments. > > Riki I see. But my point was that I don't think that it is specific to my use case. The reason being that the comment feature is a default feature found in many applications these days and that this indicates a quite general usefulness of it. To provide a more common comment feature seems to me to justify such cost. I can see how one might think differently given that one has been able to comment on ones documents for years with LyX notes. It was the same for me until I realised that the quirks I had with using LyX Notes might be solved by a more common comment feature. I don't take my suggestion to be the best idea. But I am pursuaded that there is clear room for improvement of LyX's commenting functuionality. I hope someone has some good ideas about this some day. (For my private use, I am fine with building my own feature of course.) Daniel -- lyx-devel mailing list lyx-devel@lists.lyx.org http://lists.lyx.org/mailman/listinfo/lyx-devel
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