SUN Report Builder/Usability

This is a collection of usability issues found with the Sun Report Builder extension. Usually, they should be put into IssueZilla issues, and low hanging fruits should be fixed ASAP.

iTeam Meetings

2008-12-01

Issue/Problem	Status
Add Field window
When dragging entries to the document, both created controls should have an equal width. Otherwise, it's pretty inconvenient to create and modify/maintain a tabular structure in the report.	i96431
Currently table fields are sorted like they appear in the table definition, but sometimes reversed/alphabetical sorting is desirable. Should have buttons (toolbar?) for doing so	i96517
when no section is active, double-clicking an entry (or pressing enter) does nothing. Should put into the Detail section by default.	i96459
There should be a help text at the bottom of the window, stating something like "Double-click onto an column name, or drag and drop it into the document, to create a field displaying this column's data."	i96519
There should be a button "Insert" at the bottom of the window, which does the same as double-clicking / DnD'ing an entry. This would make it more obvious to the user what is needed.	i96520
Drag and drop of multiple fields to the report is not possible. As soon as you click onto the multi-selection to start dragging, it is reverted to a single selection. Doing the same via pressing the enter key works as expected, though.	i96522
Property Browser
selecting an entry from a combo box'es drop down list by mouse should immediately activate this change. Currently, you still need to move the focus out of the combo box, which is silly.	i96429
opening a new report should already fill in the first found table (if any) into the "Content" field of the property browser, so the report is already bound to this table. This gives the user a better clue what's needed, since the "Add Field" window will also immediately be open, listing all the fields of the table.	i96428
Miscellaneous
Controls in the design should show a placeholder text, indicating the data source of this control. That is, if a control is bound to, say, table column "City", then a gray placeholder text "=City" should be drawn in the control.	i96523
There are situations where marking multiple fields does not update the various alignment buttons in the toolbars - they stay disabled.	i96431
multi-selection of controls in the design is too slow. Adding a new control to an existing selection can take multiple seconds.	i96432
Why isn't the "Report Output Format" (found in the "File" menu, which is strange in itself) a property in the property browser?	i96434
Spreadsheet Reports
The "Wrap text automatically" option for cells should automatically be set when we generate a spreadsheet document. Also, all rows should have the "Optimal row height" flag set. This way, we would have a reports where the cells automatically grow with their content.	i96524
Text Reports
When a text does not fit into a table cell, there is *no* indication of this in the printout. While the screen display shows a red triangle as indication, but this is completely lost in the printout.	open
When a text does not fit into a table cell, then only the *words* which fit are printed. That is, if you have a text like "Sun Microsystems", where only "Sun Microsyst" would fit into the cell, then actually only "Sun" is displayed. It would be much better to not stop at word boundaries here, but instead display as much text as possible.	open

Status legend

open	problem is reported here, but not fixed, not even submitted in IssueZilla
i12345	problem submitted in IssueZilla, with issue number indicated by the text
i12345	problem fixed in CWS linked to, with issue number indicated by the text