Talk

The conversation on this document: comments and the answers to them.

Redlining is a conversation attached to places on the paper. A document goes out, several people mark it up, it comes back, and somebody works through what was said. Talk is that list.

What lands here rather than in Marks

Talk and Marks are one list filtered two ways, and the filter asks one question: has this mark been put up for review? If it has, it is here. If it has not, it is in Marks. Each mark is in one list, never in both.

Review ▸ Put a Mark Up for Review is the command that answers that question, and the same item - reading Keep This Mark to Myself - takes the answer back. See Sending a document for review for what it does to a mark and for what travels when a copy goes out.

Nothing else moves a mark here. A reply does not: answering a note of your own is still a note of your own, and so is a note somebody else has answered. Another reader's mark does not either - it arrives in Marks like any other and waits there until somebody says it is worth discussing. A mark is private until it is marked otherwise, so what is in Talk is exactly what goes out when you send a copy for review.

A mark from another reader does land here when they put it up for review before sending it. That decision is written into the file and travels with it, so it is the same answer to the same question, given by a different person.

Your own name only appears on marks if Write my name on marks and history is switched on. It has no bearing on which of the two lists a mark is in: it decides what a card shows, not what the filter reads.

Answering from the card

The card of whichever mark you have chosen carries a box at its foot. Type in it and press Return, and what you wrote is added to the thread.

One box, and what it does depends on what has already been said. On a mark nobody has written on it says Comment… and writes the comment. On one that already has words it says Reply… and adds an answer. The box never replaces anything: rewriting is the pencil's job, in the editor.

Getting into the box takes two clicks. The first click on a card selects it, the way any list selects a row, and the second reaches the box. If you click once and start typing, your words go to the list rather than to the box.

Review ▸ Reply to Mark… is the other route and opens a full Markdown editor, which is what you want for an answer with structure in it.

Where a thread stands

Open, Accepted, Rejected, Done. The words are PDF's own, so a decision taken here is a decision other readers can see.

Accept and Reject are the two buttons that set one directly. All four states are on Review ▸ Mark Thread As; these two have buttons because they are the ones used most often.

They act on what is picked in the list, not on the thread whose card you happen to be looking at and not on the page. With nothing picked the status line says Pick a mark in the list first rather than doing nothing quietly. Choosing a group's heading row settles every mark in the group, because a heading stands for its members everywhere else here.

A decision follows the mark to the document the mark is in. Settling a thread on a document read beside this one puts the undo step and the record with that document, not with this window's - the file that goes back to whoever asked for the review has to carry the review, and yours must not carry somebody else's. The record names the sheet, the state, and the name you review under where you have set one.

What travels with the file

All of it. The conversation has to survive being mailed to somebody who does not have CaseLeaf, so it is kept the way PDF already keeps one: an annotation with an author, and replies that point at what they answer. Author, text, reply type and state are all standard fields.

The pointer from a reply to the comment it answers is carried in a key of CaseLeaf's own until the document is rebuilt, when the standard reference is written out; either way it survives the file being passed on.

One exception: a signature is never listed here, even one placed before it was signed - its marker is not an author, so it never becomes a thread the way a comment does.

Review ▸ Reply to Mark… opens a full Markdown editor - Write, Split and Preview, with Cancel and Save. Saving adds the reply to the thread and leaves the mark in whichever list it was already in; the card lists the replies under the words it covers, once you open it, either way.

Watch: a short video for this page is still to come.

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