Color commenting disabled in v6.3 but docs state otherwise

[mcyc]

The color commenting commands, at least for AASTeX v6.3, do not change the text color when the trackchanges option is on, as suggested in the documentation. Similarly, \edit1{<text>}, \edit2{<text>} and \edit3{<text>}, commands do not resulted in the advertised color changes either.

[augustfly]

Thanks. A minimum working example would always be appreciated, but I came up with this one that confirms that there is no color in any of the v6.3 markup tools (at least on my computer too). I'm marking this as a pretty serious bug. @gregschwarz ??

\documentclass[twocolumn,linenumbers,longauthor,trackchanges]{aastex63}

\shorttitle{text}
\shortauthors{text}

\begin{document}

\title{testing edits}
\author[0000-0012-3245-1234]{Author Name}
\affiliation{Kansas Technology College}

\begin{abstract}
abstract text
\end{abstract}

\section{testing}

this is a block of text. i want to \added{add more text to it now.}

\edit1{Some edits} are have been made.

More \edit2{edits happened recently and again} later.

Someday I'll finish \edit3{all my edits}.

This is the end of the document. I really should \deleted{delete all this text.}

\authorcomment1{I think this should be gold OA.}

\authorcomment2{I think Bob and Jill should be co-authors}

\authorcomment3{Why are we commenting inline like this?}

\end{document}

produces this nice color free thing:

[augustfly]

As a followup, I used a diff and it shows that these changes were entirely intentional. In other words the developer of v6.3 changed all the colors to black everywhere, removing color from v6.3. You can even see it in the "sample63.pdf" file in this repository -- all black, but talks about how it should be in color.

Until I hear otherwise I'm going to leave it as a bug and perhaps switch it to an out of date documentation (though I was not informed we were going back to black only edits).

https://github.com/AASJournals/AASTeX60/commit/0fca6455c3df01a12ff28d1ae03c6d6dadb28868#diff-f19e74ff9590826e03ac09d2540a0351R5701

https://github.com/AASJournals/AASTeX60/commit/0fca6455c3df01a12ff28d1ae03c6d6dadb28868#diff-f19e74ff9590826e03ac09d2540a0351R5853

[gregschwarz]

Yes, this was intentional. Apparently people hated the red and blue colors of the other versions so we went back to black with the different font styles to differentiate the change versions.

[augustfly]

@gregschwarz Okay, so I will mark this as a "documentation" bug, and we will need to remove all the color related instructions from the docs so as to not confuse authors. Note also that some of the edits (e.g., edit3) only used color and since it is black now, will need to be deleted as a tool since it doesn't do anything. I'll leave this issue open.

[claudiavr]

The "instructions to authors" should be corrected to reflect the present version os AASTeX.

[claudiavr]

The "instructions to authors" could also comment if the modifications from version 1 to version 2 of a manuscript should be kept highlighted in a possible version 3.

[augustfly]

The instructions to authors have been modified so that the \edit# and \authorcomment# instructions no longer reference color(s).

However, the \edit3 command is rendered useless in AASTeX v6.3. I would advise a further modification to the instructions dropping \edit3 entirely as it does nothing to the text.

If there were a third version then authors could simply update the text from version 2 to version 3 by deleting any \edit1 commands from the text, changing any \edit2 command to \edit1 and adding new \edit2 commands.

This problem does not affect \authorcomment3 because that command adds the plain text in parenthesis and prepends the "Author Note:" text.