This document describes some of the features of CASCADE related to commenting,
comment review, document creation, and document editing.
Getting to Know the Document Viewing Area
The document viewer is used to display, edit and comment documents. When a document is being displayed, the cursor has an arrow shape and the document viewer background color is light blue. When the document is being edited, the cursor is in the form of an "I" bar as is used in most editors, and the document viewer background color is white.
With a document displayed in the document viewer you may add a comment and display a comment that has already been made. To make a comment, position the cursor within the document where you wish to make the comment and click the left mouse button. The Making a Comment section describes this process in more detail.
You may also note that in Read/Comment mode a document may have text that has many different colored backgrounds indicating the many different types of comments that have been made in the document. In edit mode, the comments will be translated into text that indicates the destination of the link and they will look something like this:
Navigation within a document is done by means of the scroll bars on the right and bottom of the document viewer.
In the figure above, there are some colored areas visible in the document. These colored areas are links to comments that have been placed into this document. The comments show up in different colors depending upon how they were created and their status. Specifically, each comment may be classed by three variables -- such as type, status, and responsibility. The individual user chooses which variable to use when making a comment. The colors used for comments and what they mean are determined by the project leader and can be reviewed by using the Comment Display feature.The Comment Display feature is found in the Navigation menu and when selected it will bring up the comment display dialog. See Comment Display for more details.
You may also notice the narrow panel at the far right side of the document viewer with a number of colored lines in it, this panel is called the Mural. The Mural depicts all the comments within the entire document. Each line on the Mural refers to a comment and the position of the line within the Mural corresponds to the position of the comment within the document. If you want to view a particular comment, simply click a line shown in the Mural and the document will be repositioned with the colored area representing the comment displayed at the top of the screen. To view the comment simply click on the colored area and a comment reveiw dialog window will open with the comment displayed.
Persons viewing a document might want to edit the document. If you have the appropriate priviledges to edit a document, you may select the Edit Document choice from the Document menu.
Additionally, when a user is viewing a document, it may be important to know who else has viewed, edited, or commented on the document. CASCADE provides document information of this kind through the activity report tool called Project Activity which can be found in the Information Menu. The Project Activity feature logs each action performed on a document such as reading, editing, or commenting. The system can also check on the login status of group members through another feature called User Activity which can also be found in the Information Menu.
CASCADE provides a number of features for inserting, reviewing, and reporting on comments. To increase the speed with which comments can be made and reviewed, only single mouse clicks are required. While an attempt has been made to bulletproof the code for Windows users accustomed to double clicking, the Windows user should beware that double clicking may have a severe negative impact upon your CASCADE session.
The system assumes that the most common activity a user would perform is to make a comment on a document. To make a comment in a document the document must first be displayed in the document viewer in Read/Comment mode. Remember that Read/Comment mode is the mode where the document viewer background color is light blue. Once the document is displayed in the document viewer, position the cursor at the point where you wish to make the comment and click the LEFT mouse button afterwhich, a comment edit window will open. The comment edit window will permit you to enter your comment and classify the comment through drop down boxes. Now, Simply make the comment, classify it, and click the Accept button. CASCADE will accept the comment and place a colored box at the point in the document where you made the comment. The colored box is actually a link to your comment and the color of the box represents how you classified the comment. If while making a comment you decide not continue, simply press the Cancel button and CASCADE will close the comment dialog window and return you to the document. CASCADE allows you to focus on the reading and commenting of documents by handling all the system administration tasks such as naming the comment, creating a comment link, storing the comment, inserting a comment link in the document, and updating the activity logs. The comment dialog box is shown below:
To read an existing comment in a document, just click on the colored link representing the comment and a comment review dialog window will open as seen below;
Once a document has comments, traversing and managing these comments requires little more than a button click. Comment review and management consists of three primary activities in CASCADE.
Deleting comments
Reporting on comments
Each of these activities is discussed briefly below. Remember, all activities including activities such as creating comments, deleting comments, updating comments and classifying comments are logged to the Project Activity log where other project members may see who performed these actions.
While in Read/Comment mode any comment link, indicated by a colored box in the document, is an active link to a comment. If the comment link displays the name of the person, it means that person has made the comment at that point in the document. By clicking with the LEFT mouse button on a comment link you will display the comment. If you would like to move through the document hierarchy in an effort to see other comments that you might be interested in are available, you should use the Browser -- which is a graphical representation of the document space. The Browser can be accessed through the Navigation menu.
Reviewing and Classifying Comments
When a comment is open for review, the comment display window will appear as shown above. In this window, the user can change the classification of the comment. If the classification of the comment is changed, the color of the comment button will change as well.
Deleting a Comment and its Components
CASCADE also allows comments to be deleted. Deleting a comment is done through the comment review dialog window. By clicking an existing comment within a document the comment review dialog window will open. Under the Comment menu within the comment review dialog window, there are several deletion options, such as "Delete and Insert" and "Delete This Comment." (See the following figure). The DBMS component of CASCADE will assure appropriate handling of the comment deletion.
CASCADE provides an environment within which one person can work with multiple documents. CASCADE also allows multiple users to work together within a document. Users can make several comments or manipulate multiple documents. Users can also edit and comment on multiple documents at one time in a process called "cross editing" a document.
When editing a document, you may want to compare it with another document, or you may want to cut/paste from a different document. The Notepad is very useful for this purpose. CASCADE has two forms of the Notepad. The first one is called Make Notepad and is accessed via the Document menu. When Make Notepad is opened a Notepad window will display the entire document that you are currently reading. The second form of Notepad is accessed via the Utilities menu. When this Notepad is opened a blank Notepad window will be displayed allowing you to open a document from your local machine. This is how it works:
Make Notepad: Under the "Document" menu you will find "Make Notepad". This is disabled when you are in Edit mode. Let's say you are in Read/Comment mode, and you would like to open the document you are currently reading to a Notepad so that you can read it while you are in a different document. Simply click the Document menu and "Make Notepad." You will be given a small notepad window containing the document you opened with the document name as its label. You can open as many notepads as you want. Therefore, when you edit a document, you can refer to these notepad windows easily. Below is an example window for making a notepad.
Notepad: There is also a blank notepad that you can use to open a document from your local machine or just to write on. You get this feature called Notepad from the Utilities menu. Below is an example of a notepad window. You can open as many notepads as you want.
In the notepad window, there are several menus you can select as follow:
View: The View menu provides you with a line wrap ability. Also, you can insert special characters and symbols by turning-on the Show Special Character option.
Edit: This menu choice provides users with features for moving and copying.
Tool: Users can select a lower case or upper case option in the Utilities notepad.