Improvement suggestions

[khellekson]

Just a few things I noticed while forcing a test article through the software:

1. It would be great if there was a way to force the software to skip a production step, in such a way that you don't have to send endless fake e-mails to yourself to force the step through. Admittedly I was testing. But being able to bypass the author when desperately needed might be really useful. Like, say the author is doing fieldwork in the wilds of Tunisia and calls you on her satellite phone to say, "It's fine! Whatever! Just go!"--we wouldn't be able to do that. Similarly, it's unclear to me whether the author could just approve something during, say, copyedit, without uploading a new file.

2. As I noted in another forum, the Comment feature needs tweaking. Some kind of default title should be provided automatically if the commenter fails to enter a title, so that the comment hotlinks from the article page. Currently, if a title isn't input by the commenter, then the entire thing elides and you have to view all the comments to see it. In addition, the target audience for my journal is big on commenting and likes threaded comments. It is apparently impossible to "Add a New Comment" from the Comment page, only comment to existing threads, which makes no sense. This is definitely something that is going to be perceived as a problem.

3. This is just a typo: if you click the Information > For Librarians link, the breadcrumb on the associated page is incorrect. It should read Home > For Librarians, but it reads Home > For Authors. Still, it would be cool to fix this in future versions, because just finding the page to fix this is such a hassle that I still haven't bothered to do it.

FWIW! No need to respond, really. (The journal I'm testing is here: http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc and the site is not yet live.)

--Karen

[asmecher]

Hi Karen,

1. None of the steps are really required; for example, it's not necessary to run through Peer Review if you just record an Accept decision. Likewise, Copyediting and Proofreading are optional. If you want to skip the entire review and editing processes, simply submit via an account that has both Author and Editor roles and at the end of the submission process you'll be presented with a link to skip right to publication.

2. I've responded to the comment default title request at the other thread (see http://pkp.sfu.ca/support/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2519&p=8798); I've also added an "Add Comment" link to the comments page; see http://pkp.sfu.ca/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3172 for the bugzilla entry and a patch. Commenting hasn't been heavily used by any of the journals I've run across, so your feedback is helpful. FYI, if you enable anonymous commenting, you will probably get enough spam postings to take down your server; OJS 2.2, which will be released very shortly, will include support for CAPTCHA tests for user registrations and comment postings. In the meantime I'd suggest requiring users to register before they post.

3. There's a patch for this at http://pkp.sfu.ca/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3173; thanks for the report.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

[khellekson]

I'd suggest requiring users to register before they post.

Thanks for the tip! I'll be sure to do that. Thanks also for the speedy answers, here and at the other thread, and I'm esp. pleased to see the "Add Comment" link added to the Comment page.

I'm interested to see that lots of journals don't turn on the commenting. I'm sure most are on a print model, with .pdfs, etc., mirroring a printed hard copy, and commenting isn't something they're likely to use. The commenting feature was a big reason we wanted to use the software: peer review tracking, auto indexing, AND commenting!

[khellekson]

I've also added an "Add Comment" link to the comments page; see http://pkp.sfu.ca/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3172 for the bugzilla entry and a patch.

Okay, I thought I knew what I was doing, but maybe not. Here are the steps I took.

I copied the patch's code. I found the file that matched the code at the top of the fix: templates/comment/comments.tpl (not to be confused with "comment.tpl"). I overwrote the code that was there with the new code, three different ways: trying to maintain comment fields at the top for the credit/version tracking; copying over the code beginning {if $comment} to the end; and finally just overwriting the entire thing with the patch version, with no attempt to retain the front matter.

For each, if I either attempt to Save (at the Enter Comment) page or if I attempt to View All Comments (while at the article page), I get this error:

Code: Select all

Fatal error: Smarty error: [in comment/comments.tpl line 85]: syntax error: mismatched tag {/if}. expected {/foreach} (opened line 76). (Smarty_Compiler.class.php, line 2288) in /var/www/ojs/lib/smarty/Smarty.class.php on line 1095

I'll leave up what's doing this so you can see if you want: http://journal.transformativeworks.org/ ... cle/view/2

What am I doing wrong?

Sorry and thanks! I'll wait on trying to fix the JavaScript next until I know if I'm doing this right. Argh!

[asmecher]

Hi khellekson,

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_(Unix) for information on patch files. Briefly put, lines beginning with "+" represent additions, and lines beginning with "-" represent removals. If you only have FTP access to your server, you'll probably need to download the modified files, apply the patch, and upload them again.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

[khellekson]

Sorry, this is somehow all in improvement suggestions when it's just me trying to patch.

The + - thing WORKED and makes total sense. Yes, I did have to ftp it back and forth.

The patch for permitting comments from the article's Comment page works! Thanks so much. Now off to do the rest.