Feature Request: A plausible method for commenting

[rjvela82]

First, a very hearty and bashful Thank you to Serif for releasing the Publisher Beta. This is so exciting! I could go on and on but I will spare us all.

This is my Feature Request but this one is good I promise...

 

Comment Option + Comment Studio 

The ability to comment across your layout is critical for publishing. Not only is commenting suitable for editing and corrections but also useful for maintaining the requirements of a document's design. You wouldn't want to create a separate document outlining which logos or types of images to use (or not use) for your publication would you? Instead comments are essential for that level of workflow. 

So you've probably noticed I'm requesting a Comment Option vs a Comment Tool. Tools are mainly used for the layout and design of your publication and commenting is more about the individual elements. For this reason the ability to add a comment to an element should be easily accessible via context menu or as a button in the Comment Studio where a list of all your comments are displayed.

I want to add further clarification here. A Comment Studio is beneficial because you wouldn't want to use the Layer's panel as the mechanism to add comments. The Layer's panel is purely a design utility so commenting on any layer including Adjustments and Mask layers is a big misguided use case for commenting with.

Now when you decide to comment on an element and you type your remarks, one additional feature which I think takes the Comment Studio to where it needs to be is the ability to apply a color tag. The color tag is a meant to categorize your comments because not every comment has the same significance. Not every comment will have the same priority or importance to resolve. But you can take it as far as you want, say for example color coding comments based on departmental assets.

Not only is it useful visually to color code comments (which by the way I won't mention what the best way would be to display comments in the workspace because I'd rather focus on what it can achieve for users), but giving comments a way to be categorized with colors presents opportunities to enhance how the Comment Studio works as well. For example, let's say I want to filter the list of comments in the studio by Red which represents errors needing fixing. Instead of browsing the list until I find the next red comment, I can just show all red comments and click on any of them to jump to that section in my document. This filter option could also apply to the Workspace where all comments except for Red will appear until filter by another color.

Now if the Comment Studio were a reality and color coded comments were a planned feature for it, I would reiterate color categorization should not be hardcoded to represent the same meaning across all documents. If Red means Fix in one document, it doesn't necessarily mean it should mean Fix in another. If your document is themed Red, then visually you may want to choose Yellow as the color used to represent Fix.