Printerpullpages

Please note that the wiki page is under heavy development. It may be helpful to check back regularly... Thanks for you patience!

Introduction

Summary

A new printing UI should give us better performance, more ease of use and overall more customer satisfaction. New features like the instant preview in a print dialog as well as unified N-Up printing for all applications will bring OOo's print experience more up to current standards. Additionally system integration can benefit by making use of native print dialogs (for which the MacOSX implementation will be the prime example). The development is done in the CWS printerpullpages.

Comments, questions or feedback is welcomed on the ui@ux.openoffice.org mailing list.

The team working on the feature:

Role	Name	E-Mail Address
I-Team Lead	Philipp Lohmann (PL)	Philipp.Lohmann@Sun.COM
Developer	Philipp Lohmann (PL) Andre Fischer (AF) Thomas Lange (TL) Niklas Nebel (NN)	Philipp.Lohmann@Sun.COM Andre.W.Fischer@Sun.COM Thomas.Lange@Sun.COM Niklas.Nebel@Sun.COM
Quality Assurance	Hasan Ilter (HI)	Hasan.Ilter@Sun.COM
Documentation	tbd	tbd
User Experience	Christoph Noack Frank Löhmann	christophnoack@openoffice.org Frank.Loehmann@Sun.COM

Details

First let us see why we need a new print subsystem in OOo. Up to now printing for OOo's applications worked like this:

• the user clicks on File->Print
• a dialog pops up in which the user can enter the page range to be printed, the printer to be printed on, etc.
• the application evaluates the data from the dialog, starts a print job and prints each page consecutively. After the last page is printed, the application finishes the print job.

This works but has some major drawbacks on the Mac platform:

• On Mac the printed range has to be known before the native print dialog (usage of which is a requirement on this platform) gets started. Even when printing without a dialog the number of pages has to be known before the print job starts. However the system dependent print implementation cannot know this page range, because it is only known to the application.
• The Mac print system then requests individual pages to be printed. These need not be in order or each page be printed only once due to the fact that when using the native print dialog a preview gets shown. To achieve this the Mac print system requests the current page to be previewed be printed. This is completely different to OOo's current print model.
• The current workaround on the Mac is to “print” all pages of a document, but not output to the actual printer but keep a memory copy of the printed pages. These can then in the real print job be requested by the system in random order and as often as needed. This solution has obvious performance and memory footprint drawbacks

So for at least the Mac platform we need a more flexible print solution. This solution should have the following features:

• pull instead of push pages: the print subsystem pulls pages a needed from the application, not the application pushes a number of pages to the print subsystem. On systems where printing is push based (Windows, Unix) the push behavior can be easily satisfied by an adaptor that pulls all pages and pushes each to the system consecutively.
• Provide a print preview in the new dialog: the user should be provided with a preview of what his document will look like when printed out. This preview should take into account all available application specific print options which can up to now be accessed by the “Options...” button in the print dialog.
• Be able to use native print dialogs and embed our print options into them, this benefits system integration.
• Reuse existing technology when possible to keep the implementation effort low

Based on these requirements the following new model should be implemented:

• printing migrates to a “pull” model where the print system pulls pages as required from the application.
• A new generic (that is universal on all systems) print dialog gets implemented that features the entry possibilities of the old dialog as well as new features namely:
  • a print preview
  • all application specific print options (which are hidden on the “Options...” dialog in the old print dialog)
  • N-Up printing

Requirements

Scope of the Work

In Scope

Out of Scope

Satisfy the user demands for a the use of native printing dialogs (e.g. on the Mac OS X platform) Provide a high quality printing interface that is system independent Add system independent N-up printing to overcome the drawbacks of certain printer drivers Improve the overall interaction quality (e.g. workflow improvements, terminology, essential print options) Create a fresh and usable interface for printing in OpenOffice.org For all of the above: keep changes to limit that can be implemented for OOo 3.2. Further changes can wait for later version.

Additional functionality will not be added (besides the planned N-up printing)

Analysis of the Current State of Printing (OpenOffice 3.1)

Printing Features and Options

Source Data

Currently, there are many options in OpenOffice.org with regard to printing. When looking at the technical constraints (e.g. native dialogs vs. system independent dialog, application settings vs. operating system settings), the space restrictions, ... it seems to make sense to have a look at the current options. Is each option really necessary, can it be well understood? Most of the data is currently provided in several Calc documents which get (hopefully) updated regularly.

• File:Current Dialogs ListOfAllPrintDialogElements.ods: List of all printing dialog elements and options with regard to their meaning, understandability and necessity. It also includes developer comments, which I have to thank for. Worth reading and commenting ;-) Currently, this is the most important document on this page.
• File:2009-07-04 UserFeedbackData PrintingAnalysis.ods: Based on the first User Feedback Data there is a short analysis considering Writer, Impress, Draw and (partly) Math. Please note that the User Feedback system still has the drawback that some of the sources of function requests can not be identified. Elements that are ambiguous (to me) are marked with '???'.
• File:Current PrintingOptions SettingsInDocumentFiles.odt: This document summarizes all printer dialog related settings which are stored in the native OpenOffice.org files (settings.xml). As far as the settings could be identified, they have been transferred to the file “List of all Print Dialog Elements”. Issue: Even for the same module (e.g. Writer), only a subset of all options is saved in the document.

This is just an early preview how the printing dialog is used. Note: The data is based upon a previous version of "2009-07-04 UserFeedbackData PrintingAnalysis.ods", so please read the description how the data has been acquired.

Printing Dialogs

The sum OK and Cancel events are the reference for the number of uses for the dialog. Then, for each of the printer dialog elements the usage frequency is calculated on that data. The usage frequency is given by all events of each element (e.g. more/less/modify for spin fields) which will lead to inconsistencies (unknown until we can analyse the exact sequence of how elements were used). Nevertheless, for all modules (if possible) the average and standard deviation have been calculated. Date of creation 2009-07-05.

Module	Name	Average [%]	Standard Deviation [%]	Comments / Finding
All Modules	OK	93.7	10.0	Only for Impress. the part of Cancel is extreme (21.3%). Why?
All Modules	Number of copies	37.8	10.6	The usage of Number of copies is slightly higher for Writer and Draw. (But. all events count.)
All Modules	Pages	23.3	6.5
All Modules	None (Pages Text Field)	22.8	6.3
All Modules	Properties	22.5	6.8	In Impress and Draw. properties are set twice that often.
All Modules	Name	14.4	1.4
Calc	Selected cells	13.2	(none)
Impress	Slides per page	11.2	(none)
All Modules	Cancel	6.3	10.0	refer to OK
All Modules	Options	4.9	3.6	In Impress. the options are far more used (4 times as much in comparison with Writer and Calc).
Impress	Vertical	3.3	(none)
Impress	Horizontal	2.7	(none)
Calc	Selected sheets	1.3	(none)
All Modules	Collate	1.1	0.3
All Modules	All pages	1.0	0.4
Writer. Impress. Draw	Selection	0.8	0.4
All Modules	Print to file	0.6	0.2
All Modules	Help	0.2	0.1	In Impress. the need for help is maximal (0.3%).

Current Workflow

The following selection workflows descriptions are used to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of OpenOffice.org printing. These workflows are not selected according their occurence, they are just meant to be examples to better understand printing.

Name	Steps and Finding
User prints in Draw directly	Steps: User has document with certain objects (even transparent ones) User selects one transparent object User selects toolbar icon "Print File Directly (PRINTER NAME)" Dialog "Printing Selection" pops up ("Do you want to print the selection or the entire document?" [Selection / All / Cancel]) Case A1: User selects "Selection" Case A2: User selects "All" Only for case 2: Dialog "Transparency Warning" pops up ("The document contains transparent objects. Should ... reduced?" [Yes / No / Cancel]) Case B1: User selects "Yes" (reduce transparency) Case B2: User selects "No" (don't reduce transparency) Document is printed Finding: Why are there so many modal dialogs, even when the users wants to print "quickly". Besides that, why is there a modal dialog? Wouldn't it be better to use a non-modal dialog which gives the user e.g. 15 seconds time to decide. If there is no decision within this time, the printing could start using defaults.
User prints a poster in Draw	Steps: User designed a poster in Draw and set the margings to "0". Then he wants to print it on his inkjet printer which isn't able to printer borderless. User selects File -- Print... -- OK Dialog "Warning Printing Options" pops up ("The page settings do not match the print range. ..." [Fit page to print range / Print on multiple pages / Trim]) Case A1: User selects "Fit page to print range" Case A2: User selects "Print on multiple pages" Case A3: User selects "Trim" Document is printed Finding: If the document was designed on the same computer, then the user has already been warned concerning the limited print range when the page margins have been set (Format -- Page...). When printing is started, the user is warned concerning the print range. In case he wants to have the true scale, then there is no way to pre-define "trim" for the output (the same is true for "Print on multiple pages"). The user gets the "Warning Print Options" every time he prints! Note: The formulation of "Fit page to print range" in "Warning Print Options" is different in comparison to "Fit to page" in the print options. Note: If page options "brochure" is selected, then no "Warning Print Options" (paper size) is given, even if objects cross the printable range.
User prints to file	Steps: User has a document which should be saved to a file (in a printer language) User selects File -- Print... User activates "Print to file" User clicks on "OK" A file selector dialog pops up The user enters / selects the file to be printed in Case A1: File doesn't exist yet Case A2: File already exists Only for case A2: The dialog "Save" pops up ("The file already exists. Overwrite?" [Yes / No]). Notes concerning the dialog "Save" (OOo 3.1 from Ubuntu PPA): Short: The dialog is ... bad! The title is wrong, since it should state something like "Overwrite existing file?" The buttons are not self explaining ([Yes / No]) The main dialog text is surrounded by '"' (quotation marks) - why? The dialog looks "alien", because it is provided by GTK. Here, the button order is different to the OOo dialogs. On my computer, the dialog is hidden behind (!!!) the printing dialog - and OOo appears to be frozen.

General Findings:

• The printing system is very flexible, but sometimes complicated and complex!
• We have far to many modal dialogs!
• Each print (warning) dialog looks different!
• We have inconsistent options!

Screenshots

This section is intended to show some of the places where OpenOffice.org provides functionality or options concerning printing. You may see that it is not just related to the printing dialog, so that we have to keep an eye on consistency. And if you look very closely, the current user interface isn't that consistent and (maybe) understandable, so please refer to Printing Features and Options

Print Dialogs

Writer Print Dialog

Calc Print Dialog

Impress Print Dialog

Draw Print Dialog

Math Print Dialog

Print Options Dialogs

Writer Print Options Dialog

Calc Print Options Dialog

Impress Print Options Dialog

Draw Print Options Dialog

Math Print Options Dialog

Various Printer Dialogs

Printer Setup Dialog

Printer Properties Dialog (Paper)

Printer Properties Dialog (Device)

Tools - Options... - OpenOffice.org - Print Sub-Page

Writer Print Options Page View Dialog

Various Printer Warning Dialogs

Warning Printing Selection Dialog (Title „Printing Selection“)

Warning Print Options Dialog (Title "Warning Print Options")

Warning Transparency Dialog (Title „Warning“)

Warning Save Dialog (Title „Save“)

PDF Export Dialog

PDF Export Options Dialog (General)

PDF Export Options Dialog (Initial View)

PDF Export Options Dialog (User Interface)

PDF Export Options Dialog (Links)

PDF Export Options Dialog (Security)

Use Cases

Use cases are an important tool for the design of both usable and efficient interaction concepts. Knowing the most common ones, the user interface can be optimized to satisfy the need of a large user base in many situations. Besides the user feedback data, we don't have any knowledge about how our users work with OpenOffice.org. So we asked experts, users and trainers to get some feedback on "the three most common use cases". We know that this data isn't statistically relevant, but we may get some insight which we currently don't have.

Questions to the mailing lists:

• Start of thread on ux-discuss: CWS printerpullpages by Christoph
• Start of thread on de-users: Neuer Druckdialog in 3.2, Top 3 Anwendungsfälle by Regina (German), Thread-View
• Start of thread on de-dev: Neuer Druckdialog in 3.2, Top 3 Anwendungsfälle by Regina (German)

The file Printerpullpages_UseCases_CollectionOfFeedback contains the first collected feedback. If anybody wants to help to further collect/sort/analyse the feedback - that would be really great!

Competitive Analysis

Please note that although we do competitive analysis, we won't publish too many information here, e.g. screenshots. If you are interested in a special program, then try to search for images in your favorite internet search. In 99% of all cases, you will get some pictures and a first idea how it looks like ... and most presumably how it will behave.

Another good approach is to have a look at the official documentation of our platforms:

• Apple User Interface Guidelines, The Print Dialog
• Microsoft Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines, Common Dialogs (scroll down a bit, since the print dialog is not listed in the TOC)
• Linux Common Printing Dialog, Linux Printing UI Specification, specification created by the Linux Foundation OpenPrinting workgroup available in the OpenUsability.org wiki
• OpenSolaris, Project: "Presto: Automatic Printing Configuration", UI Prototypes, contains some information about the Print Dialog

Information on special applications or general printing dialogs is collected on the separate wiki page Competitive Analysis.

Requirements List

The following list contains the most important requirements to get started. Okay, these aren't real requirements, it is more like a what-feature-is-generally-desired list.

• The new print functionality shall provide an native print dialog. As an alternative, a system independent print dialog is used.
• The new print dialog shall provide all application specific print options which are necessary for most printing tasks.
• The new print dialog shall provide a print preview. The visualization is updated immediately if print options are changed (immediately: time until final visualization <= 500 ms).

Technical Constraints

The following list contains the most important technical constraints which will have impact on the final interaction and dialog design.

• Options: Especially the application specific options have to be "compatible" to be used in the native print dialogs. This refers to the overall number (space restrictions in the native print dialogs), the organization (it should be possible to define property groups), controls (limited use of graphical UI controls), layout (layouting is limited to what the operating system provides), ...
• Size: Since printing is an ordinary task, the dialog should be usable on computers with low screen resolution (e.g. Netbooks with 576px height) and large screens (e.g. PCs)
• GUI elements:
  • Non-standard controls: Since printing will provide some visual output, it is strongly desirable to use graphical controls (e.g. for the print order). Especially for embedding of application specific print options into native print dialogs this might cause problems, since a) it might be impossible, or b) it might create additional effort for porting.
  • Element "Group Box": Since OpenOffice.org 2.2 group boxes have been replaced by simple horizontal or vertical lines to divide dialogs. As a result, these group boxes aren't themed at the moment (themed: adapted to the visual style of the graphical user interface of certain operating systems).
• Layout: Currently, there is no GUI layout manager available which resizes all dialog elements according the size of the screen and the size of each of the dialog's objects. Consequence: Static dialog layout which considers the space requirements for other languages.
• Mac OS X Compatibility: OpenOffice.org is made to run on a variety of Mac OS X versions. Some of those provide a different feature set with regard to printing, so that there is a need for a compromise to satisfy most of the users.
  • 10.4 (Tiger): Application specific options can be integrated in the native print dialog, but there is no print preview available.
  • 10.5 (Leopard): Application specific can be integrated in the native print dialog, and a print preview can be made available.

Definition of Terms

Definitions for the use on this wiki page and the specification. They might be different to the final user interface terminology.

Term	Description
System Independent Print Dialog	A print dialog that is independent from the underlying operating system, since it is provided by OpenOffice.org. This dialog is used if either the native print dialog is not available or the user explicitly wants to use it instead of the native one. Besides the application specific options, it is required for the print dialog to handle also: printer selection, printer status text, print to file, copy count, collate, N-up printing
Native Print Dialog	The native print dialog is the one provided by the operating system, e.g. Mac OS X. The advantage is the visual and behavioral consistency among all applications on the platform, but there are also technical constraints which limit the flexibility of the design.
Application Specific Print Options	OpenOffice.org consists of several modules optimized for certain document types, e.g. word processing (Writer) or spreadsheet editing (Calc). For each of the document types the user may require special options which do only make sense with regard to a certain document type (e.g. printing of Notes). Most of these options are today (OpenOffice.org <= 3.1) available in the print options dialog and the tools options settings pages.
N-up printing	N-up printing refers to multiple page printing, so that more than one document page (created in the application) is printed on the real paper page. Usually the user selects the number of pages to be printed, e.g. 2 on 1.
Print Preview	A preview of what the document will look like when printed out. Therefore this preview should take as much as available print options into account. The print preview is given in the print dialog and therefore complements the page preview available in the file menu in some applications.

Design Proposals

Please refer to the page Design Proposals. Based on requirements, it collects design proposals and rates them - maybe some of the proposals get integrated into OpenOffice.org.

Status and Roadmap

It is planned to provide a new basic dialog in OpenOffice.org 3.2. So the interaction design should be finished until end of June 2009. Hopefully ;-)

Now delayed to end of july. However the current implementation is basically "final" that is what will be done before CWS printerpullpages gets integrated.

Specification document: tbd

Current State

• The development happens since quite a few months. Recently, User Experience jumped in and will try to further improve the dialog and the overall workflow concerning printing.
• Development versions: Development versions can be found at ftp://qa-upload.services.openoffice.org/printerpullpages/
• Issue Tracker: All issues with an descriptive entry “printerpullpages” can be listed with Extended Issue Tracker Query
• EIS: The EIS entry for “printerpullpages” is located at http://tools.services.openoffice.org/EIS2/cws.ShowCWS?logon=true&Id=7202&Path=DEV300%2Fprinterpullpages

Future Tasks

If there are interesting ideas how to further improve printing in OpenOffice.org, then the development might continue for future version of OpenOffice.org.

Philipp said that Caolan, a guy working for RedHat, offered some help to bind the native print dialog in Gnome (GTK). Some years ago, he already blogged about the gnomeprintui.

Other Ideas

Date Raised	Source	Summary	Status	Details
???	I-Team Specification	Replace Print Preview Printing	Accepted	Currently, Writer provides very flexible N-up capabilities. This should be made available to all applications – via the new print dialog.
???	I-Team	Improve Workflows	New	Besides the printing dialog, the concepts and the handling of printing options is difficult in OpenOffice.org (currently we just provide a list of options which have to be combined in a useful manner – here the user has to know exactly what to do). Another example is the work-flow breaking dialog handling when printing. More information can be found in the blog post Transparent Decision Making. So this is no real “idea”, it is more a reminder to keep an eye on that.
2009-06-11	I-Team	Contextual Information Bar	New	As discussed in “Improve Workflows”, there are currently a number of modal dialogs which might interrupt the workflow. So how about a contextual information bar which informs only (e.g. for wrong page sizes, transparency, gradients, ...)? How about adding a contextual information bar in the dialog itself... Rough mockup of a contextual information bar On the other hand, it would be better to get rid of all these additional informations, warnings and decisions. Open Questions: If people print via shortcut, then the print dialog is omitted. What to do? If native dialogs are used, then we miss the flexibility to add this kind of warning.
???	I-Team	Harmonize printing and PDF export	New	Currently, the capabilities of printing and PDF export differ a lot (Example: There is no way to export handouts in Impress.) Why not harmonize that?
2009-06-14	I-Team	Printer Presets	New	Currently, we provide a lot of printer settings which have to be combined by the user. Generally, users use only a small number of combinations, since they are editing similar documents. So they might just use settings for "draft" or "final output". Print settings which could be customized could help here (costomized: edited, saved, loaded, deleted). Some competitors already offer this kind of functionality.
2009-06-14	Regina	multiple copies of a one page document on one paper sheet	New	Use case: You need a lot of DIN A5 sheets to distribute flyers or for to give the sheets to your pupils in your classroom. You write a DIN A5 document. But DIN A5 paper is more expensive than DIN A4 paper. So you want to print the same document twice on a DIN A4 paper. That is not possible up to now. Besides the Issue 67687 , have a look in the internet forums, you see that people are searching for that feature but get only workarounds or have to buy special software. For example http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=65019 or http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=30747 or the workaround for Word http://www.gmayor.com/print_multiple_copies.htm
2009-06-16	Regina	Assistance for envelope printing	New	Printing envelopes still belongs to the tasks which most failures. OOo should use informations about the printer (for example from the PPD-file) to help the users. For example, OOo can show how to insert the envelop, or show, what position the envelope must have compared with the standard paper sheet.
2009-07-04	Christoph	Merge change tracking and notes	New	Issue: In Writer, currently there is no common handling for the printing of Notes or handling of Change Tracking. If tracked changes are enabled in the document, they are also printed. There is no way to enable/disable these „reviewer markups“. Proposal: Maybe something to change/merge for further releases? Open Question: Maybe also Calc is affected, since it also supports change tracking.

Mockups and Screenshots

This section contains mockups and screenshots:

• Mockups are working models used for demonstration purposes. There is no real functionality at all, because the following pictures have been composed with graphic programs just to get a first impression how it will look like.
• Screenshots show the behavior of the real development in OpenOffice.org. Those pictures are updated more or less regularly.

	Current state of the N-Up tab page in the system independent print dialog.
	An initial draft mockup, just to let you know that we are working on something ;-) Many of the implemented proposals are still in discussion...
	A draft mockup, still many things are in discussion...
	An early mockup. Some comments: Many options have been changed / renamed / merged. Although we thought about these changes, they might not be final. Draw and Math are completely missing in the mockup. How to fit the dialog on small screens is in discussion. Due to the missing layout manager, currently we propose to separate the content in separate tabs like "General 1", "General 2". That should at least provide a solution for the Netbook users. Some options will be placed (information architecture) differently for native dialogs, e.g. brochure printing. A reasonable textual description is missing...
	Changes in comparison to last mockup: Implemented some of the proposals and ideas from Andreas (Anjoschu) commented on the "Wiki Talk Page", e.g.: Rework of ranges and copies in the Calc dialog Decision for "Print to file..." button Some cleanups and corrections ... some things are still open for discussion Added print options for Calc (and removed a - to me - unnecessary option) Added print dialog and print options for Draw Provided separate examples for: Default Dialog Size, Full Dialog Size, Compact Dialog Size (for e.g. Netbooks) Added note for the Impress/Draw size options if brochure printing is enabled Open Points (biiig questions): Impress: How to integrate Handout printing and the problem that document definitions get overridden Writer: RTL/LTR options, location of "add blank ..." All: location of some options (e.g. Reversed) Why should we provide "Colors" (original colors, grayscale, black&white) to Draw/Impress only? Does it make sense to make it available to all document types? ...
	Changes in comparison to last mockup: Cleanup of text labels, some of it inspired by feedback by Anjoschu: Use of capitalization Use of OpenOffice.org module names for module specific options (similar to the application window titles and application options) Many other small changes Simplified (hopefully) inclusion of left/odd/front pages vs. right/odd/front pages. Moved some options (back) to underline the dependence to specific OpenOffice.org modules. Still, there seems not to be the optimal solution for the given constraints :-( Comments: Brochure printing is currently added to the multi page printing (N-up). For native dialogs which implement its own N-up it is currently proposed to create a separate group containing: Brochure, Order, Include Open Points: Impress: The print dialog (tab "General") misses the ability to use the handout layout defined in the document. Adding this will be a challenge concerning /(consistent) space and layout. And, as Anjoschu mentioned ... it relates somehow to N-up printing All: How to "devide" the settings for limited display resolutions All: A lot (!!!) of textual description how certain elements behave (e.g. description of whether to keep the page order entry "Left to right, then down" for 2-on-1 printing) All: The name of the weird menu (last tab): Options, Output Options, Driver Options or Extras (at the moment, I prefer output options since all the elements are options and driver is too technical). All: Warning messages, pre-defined output settings, better printer details integration All: Why should we provide "Colors" (original colors, grayscale, black&white) to Draw/Impress only? Does it make sense to make it available to all document types? All: May we really re-use the existing Order drop-down for both brochure printing and N-up? Maybe people are confused, but it uses space efficiently... All: Does it make sense to add an option to make settings persistent (to e.g. store defaults like in Tools -- Options)?
	Changes in comparison to last mockup: Updated "somehow realistic version" dialog to match the current Calc print dialog proposal Added examples for the position of the print page preview (portrait, landscape, additonal info). The initial size might be adjusted to better fit landscape layouts, but after the dialog has been shown to the user, the size should stay the same (e.g. for keeping thebutton positions). Small terminology updates (e.g. Calc "Thereof" to "Thereof print") Better alignment of controls in tab page "Page Layout" Comments: There has been an intensive discussion with Philipp how to integrate N-up and brochure printing. The current approach features three radio buttons: Default = One page per sheet, no brochure printing. Usually this is handled by "Pages per sheet = 1", but here we have to avoid a cluttered layout in the dialog when the controls of N-up would appear above brochure printing. Unfortunately, this requires an additional click when prnting several pages per sheet (click on "Pages per sheet" and then selecting the number of pages). Brochure = Brochure printing. Added a drop-down to select the script writing direction; this has been the checkbox "Right to left" because an automatic detection is nearly impossible. Pages per sheet = N-up printing. Removed "1", because this is handled by default. I hope this will be understood, because it is really different to other software... Include: The new include combines the setting for default, brochure printing and N-up printing. Thus, we now refer to e.g. both "Front sides" and "left pages" in the drop-down. Open Points: All: Define defaults for all the elements (e.g. set the margins to 0 for "Pages per sheet = Custom" All: Rename "Default" to "Default (1 page per sheet)" to make its meaning more clear? (tab "Page Layout") All: Or, re-arrange the whole tab by removing the "Border line" printing. All: A lot (!!!) of textual description how certain elements behave (e.g. description of whether to keep the page order entry "Left to right, then down" for 2-on-1 printing) All: The name of the weird menu (last tab): Options, Output Options, Driver Options or Extras (at the moment, I prefer output options since all the elements are options and driver is too technical). All: Warning messages, pre-defined output settings, better printer details integration All: Why should we provide "Colors" (original colors, grayscale, black&white) to Draw/Impress only? Does it make sense to make it available to all document types? All: Does it make sense to add an option to make settings persistent (to e.g. store defaults like in Tools -- Options)?
	Changes in comparison to last mockup: All: Tab page Page Layout has been refined again. We decided to now go for radio buttons for choosing "Pages per sheet" and "Brochure" printing. We accept that the radio buttons are separated by several other control - but we gain a lot of clarity for the rest of the dialog. Moved "Border line around each page" to new position to improve the layout of the controls. But, the existance and the position of the control are still preliminary - maybe it will getÜbearbeitetes Print Layout removed again... All: Added a proposal how a Print Page Preview may look like, when there is no Print Range defined (e.g. if there is an empty input field for page range). Impress: The group Print in the tab General has been improved. Now, it should be able to activate the handout printing format which has been defined in the document. Due to the amount of space available it is simply called "Default" (although we would have liked to make it more self-explanatory). Comments: none Open Points: Math: Completely missing All: Define defaults for all the elements (e.g. set the margins to 0 for "Pages per sheet = Custom" All: A lot (!!!) of textual description how certain elements behave (e.g. description of whether to keep the page order entry "Left to right, then down" for 2-on-1 printing) All: The name of the weird menu (last tab): Options, Output Options, Driver Options or Extras (at the moment, I prefer output options since all the elements are options and driver is too technical). All: Warning messages, pre-defined output settings, better printer details integration All: Why should we provide "Colors" (original colors, grayscale, black&white) to Draw/Impress only? Does it make sense to make it available to all document types? All: Does it make sense to add an option to make settings persistent (to e.g. store defaults like in Tools -- Options)?

Online Discussion, Press Coverage and Comments

• Philipp Lohmann: One step forward, the next step back, blog posting, 2008-11-11
• Philipp Lohmann: New Print UI, blog posting, 2009-06-04
• Christoph Noack: Transparent Decision Making, blog posting, 2009-06-13