Notes, comments and suggested edits

Any text hosted on LibreTimes can be annotated passage by passage. Select a few words, a sentence or a formula, and a small bar appears above the selection:

• Comment — a remark about that passage, shown beside it to every reader.
• Suggest an edit — propose replacing the passage with your own wording. The authors decide whether it goes into the text.
• Flag an error — say that something is wrong, without proposing the fix.
• Private note — a note only you can see, kept with the passage.

Annotations live beside the text, never inside it. Nothing you write changes what other readers see until the work's authors accept a suggestion.

Reading annotations

Annotated passages are highlighted in the text: comments in yellow, notes in blue, suggested edits underlined in green, errors with a red wavy line. Click a highlight, or the round counter in the corner of the page, to open the panel with every thread in reading order. From the panel you can reply, jump to a passage, and filter to your own annotations, to edits and errors, or to notes.

If the text has changed since an annotation was written, the panel says so: a passage that was edited is marked changed since, and one that is no longer in the text sorts last with a note saying it is gone. Its thread stays readable.

Who sees what

On a work that is not published yet, nothing is public: annotations go to the authors.

Suggesting an edit

Suggest an edit opens on the passage as the authors wrote it, in Markdown. Change only what needs changing — a letter, a word, a sign in a formula — and add a line saying why if it is not obvious. The authors see your wording next to the original and accept or reject it, and you are told which.

An accepted suggestion becomes part of a new version of the text, and the version's summary credits you. For a published scientific work or a book, the accepted change becomes the next version, which the authors publish as a correction.

Reviewing suggestions on your own work

On a work you can edit, every open suggestion and flagged error has Accept and Reject in the panel:

• Accept on a suggestion applies it to the text as a new version. If the passage has been edited since the suggestion was made, it cannot apply cleanly; it is marked outdated instead and nothing changes.
• Mark as fixed on a flagged error records that you dealt with it; the text changes only through your own edit.
• Reject records your decision and keeps the thread. A rejected or outdated suggestion can be reopened.

You are notified when someone suggests an edit or flags an error in your work. Turn this off, or have it mailed, under Settings → Notifications.

In the editor

The editor shows the same annotations over your draft. Annotations in the editor's header opens them in a column beside the text; clicking a highlight opens its thread. Select text and choose Add note to leave yourself — or your co-authors — a working note; it is shared with the authors by default.

Accepting a suggestion from the editor creates a new version straight away, so save your own changes first; the editor then reloads the updated text.

From the command line and AI assistants

The same actions are available outside the browser. With lt, lt work suggest proposes an edit, lt work review lists what is open on your work, and lt work accept / lt work reject decide it. An AI assistant connected to LibreTimes can list annotations, annotate a passage, suggest an edit, and — on your own work, with your permission — accept or reject suggestions. Every one of these is the same annotation the web page shows.