Oxygen XML Forum

We would like a way to accept/reject all tracked changes in the topic of a map.

Currently, if we have a map with 100 topics in it and we make changes to 15 of those topics, then when we need to reset the changes to the topics we have to search for each topic that has changes, open the topics, and accept/reject the changes a topic at a time. This can be quite time consuming.
Thanks for your consideration.
Jason

Hi Jason,

I considered that the purpose of reviewing tracked changes is to go through each individual change and decide whether it is a good idea to accept or reject it.
Can you give us more details about the work flow in your company? If somebody looks over the changes and considers them OK, then way don't they accept/reject changes as they go along?

Regards,
Radu

We primarily use Track Changes to show content reviewers where we have made changes since the last revision of a document. We do not use Track Changes to enable our reviewers to select whether to accept/reject content changes. Our DITA content is stored in a content management system (Ixiasoft). Our content reviewers do not have write privileges to the files in the CMS, so they cannot accept/reject changes (nor do they even want to have those priviliges).

When we begin revising a document and start making changes to topics, we turn on Track Changes so that the reviewers of those topics will be able to see what we have done. When we send the topics to review, we produce PDFs (we have a script which shows oXygen's tracked changes in the PDF). The PDFs enable our reviewers to insert comments about the content in the topics. They send the PDFs with their comments back to us. At this point, we search for all topics that contain tracked changes and accept them all. By doing this, we are effectively cleaning the documents of all tracked changes so that those changes, which the reviewers have now seen, will not be shown in the next review cycle. In the next review cycle, we want to show them only the changes that were made since the last review. For each cycle of review, we have to clear/accept the tracked changes from the previous review cycle so that reviewers only see changes from the current review cycle.

The feature to "clear/accept all tracked changes" is included in other technical writing applications, such as FrameMaker, and so we would very much like to have that same functionality now that we are using oXygen. I have been working in technical publications for around 12 years and have always used and appreciated tools that provide a "clear/accept all tracked changes" function. In my opinion, the functionality is expected by many technical writers in the field. The writers in our company would very much like to have this feature. If you can add it to the oXygen roadmap, it would save us a significant amount of time. We would appreciate it.

If I can provide additional information about our review workflow, please let me know.
Jason

Hi Jason,

Thanks for clearly describing your work flow, I added an improvement request for this and it will be discussed.

But I think you have one workaround for now, perform a Find/Replace in Files on topics from the entire DITA Map searching using Regular Expressions for Oxygen specific change tracking instructions like: and replacing with empty string.

Regards,
Radu

We have a need for this feature as well. Consider this an "up vote"!

Hi Scott,

Thanks for the vote, I will add your details on the opened issue.
Do you want this "Accept/Reject changes" feature to also remove comments? Or only handle insertions and deletions which were made with change tracking?
If I right click on a DITA Map opened in the DITA Maps Manager view and choose for example to "Accept all changes", you would also expect that changes would be processed in topics not directly referenced in the DITA Map, but indirectly referenced in other topics referenced in the DITA Map, right?
Do you want to same action to be available in the Oxygen Project view? Right click a folder there...
And probably a "Preview" would also be nice...

Regards,
Radu

I do think it should resolve comments as well. The feature we really want is the ability to conduct a bookmap-level change tracking review, so we don't have to search for each individual topic that might contain feedback. While the Accept All across a map would be helpful, it is really the ability to conduct the complete doc review that we need most (even if we have to resolve each comment/change individually).

Hi Scott,

Oh, I see, you do not necessarily want to accept all changes without reviewing them, you somehow want Oxygen to advance in each topic, and allow you to accept/reject changes and then take you to the next change in the next topic which has changes and so on....

Regards,
Radu

Yes, exactly. This would be a very useful review feature. It might be complex, since a bookmap can have many nested submaps, but very helpful to have it be a guided review experience.

Hi Scott,

If we were to have this feature I would see the interaction something like this:
You right click in the DITA Maps Manager on the root of the main opened DITA Map (or on some selected topics) and you choose "Accept/Reject Changes".
Oxygen goes through all selected topics or the topics referenced in the entire DITA Map (and submaps) and creates a list of files which have change tracking insertion, deletions or comments. We can do this just by looking for those specific Oxygen processing instructions in the files.
Once we have the list of files, we show it to you in a custom view. You can open individual files in Oxygen and manually accept/reject changes but the view will also have "Accept/Reject All" buttons and also a button for "Remove all comments".
So such an interaction would help both people who still want to manually go through each change in each topic containing changes and people who just want to accept/reject all changes automatically.

Regards,
Radu

Radu wrote:Hi Scott,
...
So such an interaction would help both people who still want to manually go through each change in each topic containing changes and people who just want to accept/reject all changes automatically.

Regards,
Radu

Radu: I like this vision. Enabling the user to select the scope of action is powerful.

Hi,

A possible current workaround for people who want to see an overview of all their changes is to go to the main menu "Window->Show view" and open the Open/Find Resource view. The view should index all the DITA topics referenced in the DITA Maps Manager view and also resources referenced in the Project view and it has an "In Reviews" radio button which can be switched to see all comments/changes in those files, then double click each of them to open the corresponding file.

Regards,
Radu

This is something we'd be interested in also.

Hi,

Thanks for the vote, we'll update this forum thread after we'll implement this feature.

Regards,
Radu

Hi!

We also need this feature. We have to start translation before the source content is finalized so we need to accept all changes and strip all comments in a defined scope of files. It would be nice if we could do this from within Oxygen.

Thanks,
Nikolay

Hi,

The quickest way to reject/accept all changes in current map and referred topics is to go to Oxygen preferences and enable the Allow referenced content to be edited from Editor / Edit Modes / Author page.

After that, open the map in editor with resolved topics: Opening a DITA Map With Topic Content Resolved

Now, you can perform the Accept/Reject all changes over the current map hierarchy.

Let me know how this works for you,
Adrian S

Hi,

My team is also interested in this feature as well. While the workaround that Adrian mention is possible, some of the DITA Maps that my team works with have >500 topicrefs in them and it can take quite a long time to load the resolved contents for all topics.

We would like Oxygen to be able to quickly search through all topic references in a DITA Map and display a condensed list of only the referenced topics that have a tracked change or comment, which sounds like what Radu previously proposed.

Thank you!

Daniel

Hi Adrian,

I wonder if this could be implemented using a refactoring operation, which could then be run on DITA map hierarchy scopes, previewed, given options to control aspects of the operation (keep/remove comments, etc.)?

We use @rev attributes (instead of "Track Changes"), and we have a refactoring operation that makes it easy for writers to remove them from an entire book or online help map of multiple books. Perhaps a similar refactoring operation approach could be used here. And I think it would be much faster than resolving all topic content in a map, especially for large maps.

Hi,
In the Oxygen main menu Tools->"XML Refactoring" dialog we do provide a refactoring action dealing with change tracking, comments and highlights:
https://www.oxygenxml.com/doc/versions/ ... xk_2pb_vpb

Accept all tracked changes, remove all Oxygen-specific comments and highlights
Use this operation to accept all application-specific tracked changes (from elements and attributes) or remove all application-specific comments or highlights. There are several options to choose from:

Accept all tracked changes
Accepts all application-specific tracked changes (from elements and attributes).
Remove comments
Removes all application-specific comments.
Remove highlights
Removes all application-specific highlights.

The refactoring action can be applied for example on the entire DITA project folder.
Regards,
Radu