Notes2

Introduction

Notes2 is a new project started as one accepted project in Google's Summer of Code 2007 (GSOC). It will be also worked on after the GSOC is over.

Notes 2 addresses the revision of the notes functionality in OpenOffice.org Writer to improve its usability and accessibility. Main goal is to resolve the main issues of the current implementation, which are reported by users. Furthermore, the notes implementation should at least provide the functionality of the competitors in the same class. In long term considerations, it is intended to consistently implement the notes functionality in the other OpenOffice.org modules. The main target audience is the Small-Business-User.

Please note that the information in this Wiki is work in progress and may change.

The team working on the feature (in alphabetical order, OOo names in parenthesis):

Name	OOo nick	role
Mathias Bauer	mba	GSOC Mentor, Development
Uwe Fischer	ufi	Documentation
Christoph Noack	christophnoack	User Experience
Maximilian Odendahl	mode	GSOC Student, Development
Éric Savary	es	QA

Scope of the work

• Provide direct and easy editing of notes to get rid of the old notes editing window.
• Establish good accessibility for disabled users by providing keyboard shortcuts or using appropriate colors.
• Integrate the new functions in the existing functionality, e.g. the OpenOffice.org Navigator.
• Respect the needs for advanced text editing, e.g. spell checking, rich-text formatting or sorting/filtering of notes.
• Create both fresh and usable visual design of the notes.

More detailed requirements have been collected and will be published here later.

Implementation

The implementation has to be able to handle at least the following items:

• scrollable

• able to handle richtext to include text with attributes

• spell checking

• different position, sizes and background colors

• able to be drawable inside the right margin

After discussion with several people, there seem to be two different possibilities:

implementation	advantages	disadvantages
OverlayTextObject using the drawing layer	possible use of GUI gimmicks such as transparency, animations etc.	large implementation effort tight interaction with drawing layer neccessary no scrollbars
own window	code nicely seperable from other OO code no extra implementation effort for scrollbars	maybe alien look in rare cases

Both implementation will use the EditEngine as well as an OverlayObject for a connection line from anchor point to the note itself

Update: Decision was made to go with a seperate window first

Usability

Several questions related to the appearance and usability have to be decided:

• main color of notes
  • Suggestion: natural color of physical postit notes)

• when to show vertical scrollbars if all notes need it due to a full page: if we show them,it could be confusing to the user and could look alien, if we don't, user might not be aware of the full length and miss text

• what about meta information such as date and author
  • permantly inside the note
  • in the tooltip
  • inside the navigator
  • titlebar

• different colors or intensity when editing a certain note

• appearance of connection line from anchor point to note
  • could be a dotted line turning into a full line while editing or always a full line
  • flashing object

QA entries related to notes in writer

Work will address issues:

767, 1981, 4964, 5487, 6193, 9776, 23465, 32232, 45788, 48150, 62625, 63759, 74157, 61644 and 80135.

See this query for an overview.

Release Dates

Expected release of specification draft: end of July 2007

Expected release of the new implementation: OpenOffice.org 2.4 (around February 2008)

Further Thoughts

There are several items which are nice to have, but will eventually not make it into the first release:

• different colored boxes for different authors, adjustable by user
• attaching comments not only to a text position, but also a selection of text. As the ODF format for notes does not allow this currently, there are two possibilities:
  • use ODF metadata, if version 1.2 is approved
  • in collaboration with other ODF implementations, change the format of notes inside the ODF format
• printing of notes
• nicer appearance, e.g. round corners for notes

Screenshots of other notes implementations

File:Note oo.JPG

OpenOffice with Patch

note in right margin, yellow postit color

TextMaker 2006

note in right margin with extending of white paper background, red color

MS Word 2003

note in right margin with extending of white paper background, red color

Apple Pages