Option to set Authorship colors default to false

[pozzo-balbi]

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name: Option to set Authorship colors default to false about: title: '' labels: enhancement assignees:

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Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. When you open a new pad you only have the options to disable colors altogether or have Authorship colors enabled. The problem is that you cannot activate authorship colors, once it is disabled, so disabling is not really a solution. And having authorship colors enabled by default has readability problems to new users. Sure, they can manually disable authorship colors, but if I need to explain how it is done, then maybe changing the default is the easier way to go about.

Describe the solution you'd like In settings.json have an option

  "padOptions": {
    "noColors":         false,
    **"showAuthorColors": false,**
    "showControls":     true,
    "showChat":         true,

Describe alternatives you've considered none were successful

Additional context I found that this has already been requested here: https://groups.google.com/g/etherpad-lite-dev/c/bsIWRm73_Eg/m/7pJkKph-MOUJ . I found that changing the Authorship color box sets two values (showAuthorshipColors, showAuthorColors) in a cookie.

Plugin? Might this feature be better suited to being a plugin? No, it should be in the settings.

[klardotsh]

While moving to https://www.npmjs.com/package/ep_author_neat2 made for a significantly better UX for my users, the default being ON for such a visually cluttered feature seems pretty horrible to me, and something I should be able to disable at a server level by default (unless the client side cookies have explicitly opted in). Huge +1 to this nearly two year old issue.

[robinmetral]

Agreed, in my opinion this isn't a sensible default as it distracts from the main goal of a document—the contents itself. Authorship is meta information that, while useful, should be toggled on if needed.

I can imagine that there's some disagreement about this though, so at minimum an option to turn this off by default for given pads or server instances would be nice.

[robertgarrigos]

Just got to this page thinking there was no such option, but there is:

"padOptions": {
    "noColors":         true
}
}}}

[robinmetral]

@robertgarrigos does this actually hide authorship colors, or is it other kinds of colors? The settings snippet shared by OP already shows the noColors option.

(Disclosure: I haven't tested this, I don't run an etherpad server and I'm personally more interested in the option to disable authorship colors when creating a pad as a user of a shared instance.)

[robertgarrigos]

@robinmetral this is a server setting to hide authorship colors, indeed. I see, I misunderstood the issue. Sorry.