Document Protection: Version control and User role management

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medical-hero

Hi,

I mostly work alone but I wish a solution for better workflows in teams. It is really hard to share this documents for collaboration. This is for small groups essential. Many small clubs have a magazine for members or the typical yearbooks for students. In addition there are magazines for celebrations like weddings or graduation. Most of them are made with Microsoft Word or something similar - a word-processor. Desktop publishing is too hard for many people. You have to install a software that you need just for that one task. And then you see options you never heard of before. So it is easier to use an online editor like canva or lucidpress. But we want a full-fledged solution for professionals and easy to use for anyone at the same time!

So I considered that it would great if Scribus could protect the documents from editing or parts of it. Anyone can fill in their written texts and see if it fits or not the available space. If you give the articles to the editor-in-chief as text file you don't know anything until feedback. If it is needed you can edit the text but you can't edit the styles because the password protected lock.

After seeing it in Viva Designer I recommend a simple but powerful User role management based on Wordpress:
1. Administrator or editor-in-chief: all possible rights
2. Editor: Editors can create, edit and delete texts, images, sections and pages, moderate comments
3. Author/Contributor: Authors can create, edit and delete texts, images and pages as well as add comments. Somebody who can't publish or export except text and low resolution.
4. Subscriber or reader: Only reading/proofreading and if enabled adding notes/comments.

Rights that can be enabled or disabled per User group:
Document
Allow Save, Allow Save As, Allow Import, Edit Document Settings, Edit Preferences, Edit Colors, Edit Style Sheets, Create Master Pages, Duplicate Master Pages, Edit Master Pages, Delete Master Pages

Output
Allow Export (in General), Allow Export As PDF, Allow Export As EPS, Allow Export As Image, Allow Export As SVG, Allow Export As Text, Allow High Resolution Output

Layout & Content
Edit Objects (in General), Move Objects, Stretch Objects, Modify Objects, Create Objects, Delete Objects, Manage Pages, Manage Sections, Edit Text, Edit Pictures, Edit Tables

Toolbars & Palettes
Every Toolbar and Palette has to be locked/disabled and/or hidden if needed

Revision Management
Comparison and composition of the shared document with all their different revisions. Merging all revisions from several files. For example there are five editors to coordinate. Enable export for revisions. The whole document or just parts which can be edited and merged together again afterwards.

This is a heavy task so if you find it nice I recommend this a long-term feature like in version 2.x

Nermander

I personally think this would compliacte Scribus to much.

I think it is better to see Scribus at the layout tool, and let one person do the layout (or at least let a few persons lay out their own pages and then just import them into a final document).

This means you will have to separate the "content management" from the "layout management".

For content management, in my eyes it makes sens to use a content management system instead of a page layout program.

That is how magazines have been produced for the last 30-40 years I believe.

I have once been playing around with using a combined issue tracker and wiki (Trac) for management of text (proof reading, editor approval etc). In Trac you could set up custom roles and workflows. This meant however that the formatting used wiki syntax, and an import filter fort Scrbius would have been needed.

For images my idea was to use Gallery (and in Trac just link to the images in Gallery).

I never reached a finished solution because the version of trac I used then did not have any means to share user accounts with Gallery, but it looked promising.