“As a user I can add comments to a document” is the second of 27 requirements that we’ve studied as part of our benchmark on XML editors.
Vital part of authoring
We think this is an important requirement because it is a vital part of authoring and teamwork with colleagues. Adding comments for yourself allows you to expand your working memory, which is an important part of the writing process. Leaving comments for colleagues allows you to communicate about specific strings of content, streamlining the work process for everyone.
Keeping the context
Three of the seven editors do not support inserting comments. Without those three the average rating was 1.9, with two editors (Google Docs and EasyDita) scoring a 4. These solutions scored high for allowing comments to be made quick and easy, as well as keeping the context of these comments clear and allowing a discussion.
Easy review
Collaboration between colleagues is not a one-way street, and neither is the commenting solution in FontoXML. Comments stick to their context in any topic or project, and can easily be reviewed from an overview. In this way we’ve combined some of the most powerful features we’ve seen and improved on it for various common use cases.