Version management in Writer is a great tool for documents developing over time and keeping track of all the changes. What I find somewhat confusing is the use of the Compare command when working with a document that has version management turned on.
Example: I have open a document with version management (I call it the main document) and want to integrate some suggested changes from a colleague, which he has edited into a copy of the main document. The result of integrating these changes should become the next version of the main document. Hence, I have to execute Track Changes → Compare from the main document and select the document with the changes. But this will display the changes in kind of an inverse way: suggested inserts are shown as deletes and suggested deletes are shown as inserts. That’s because the Compare operation treats the current document as the “new” document and the selected document as the “old” one.
As long as one is comparing two non-versioned documents this compare logic is fine, as one can always start the compare from the newer document and select the older one. In case one of the documents has versions turned on, however, one normally wants the changes to take place in the versioned (main) document, although it is probably the older one. This puts compare into kind of a reverse mode.
It is possible to work with this reverse mode of comparison by just acting in the exact opposite way as one usually would: Instead of “Accept” press “Reject” and vice versa. But this is really very counter intuitive.
My question is: Have I understood the operation of Versions and Compare correctly or is there a simple solution to this dilemma?
If I got things right, may I make a suggestion: Change the user interface of the Track Changes → Compare command slightly and let the user decide which of the two documents is supposed to be the older / newer one. For example by splitting the command into “Compare with older” and “Compare with newer”. That would also help in making comparisons more intuitive when just two plain documents were involved.