Difference between revisions of "Printerpullpages"
From Apache OpenOffice Wiki
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[[Image:2009-06-14 printerpullpages logo.png|center]] | [[Image:2009-06-14 printerpullpages logo.png|center]] | ||
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== Introduction == | == Introduction == | ||
| − | === Summary === | + | === 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 [[ChildWorkSpace|CWS]] '''printerpullpages'''. | + | 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 [[ChildWorkSpace|CWS]] '''printerpullpages'''. |
| − | Comments, questions or feedback is welcomed on the [mailto:ui@ux.openoffice.org ui@ux.openoffice.org] mailing list. | + | Comments, questions or feedback is welcomed on the [mailto:ui@ux.openoffice.org ui@ux.openoffice.org] mailing list. |
| + | <br> The team working on the feature: | ||
| − | + | {| cellspacing="0" cellpadding="4" border="2" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 1em 1em 1em 0pt; border-collapse: collapse;" | |
| − | {| | + | |
|- | |- | ||
| − | | bgcolor="#dddddd" | '''Role''' | + | | bgcolor="#dddddd" | '''Role''' |
| + | | bgcolor="#dddddd" | '''Name''' | ||
| + | | bgcolor="#dddddd" | '''E-Mail Address''' | ||
|- | |- | ||
| − | | '''I-Team Lead''' | + | | '''I-Team Lead''' |
| − | | Philipp Lohmann (PL) | + | | Philipp Lohmann (PL) |
| Philipp.Lohmann@Sun.COM | | Philipp.Lohmann@Sun.COM | ||
|- | |- | ||
| − | | '''Developer''' | + | | '''Developer''' |
| − | | | + | | |
| − | Philipp Lohmann (PL)<br> | + | Philipp Lohmann (PL)<br> Andre Fischer (AF)<br> Thomas Lange (TL)<br> Niklas Nebel (NN)<br> |
| − | Andre Fischer (AF)<br> | + | |
| − | Thomas Lange (TL)<br> | + | | |
| − | Niklas Nebel (NN)<br> | + | Philipp.Lohmann@Sun.COM<br> Andre.W.Fischer@Sun.COM<br> Thomas.Lange@Sun.COM<br> Niklas.Nebel@Sun.COM |
| − | | | + | |
| − | Philipp.Lohmann@Sun.COM<br> | + | |
| − | Andre.W.Fischer@Sun.COM<br> | + | |
| − | Thomas.Lange@Sun.COM<br> | + | |
| − | Niklas.Nebel@Sun.COM | + | |
|- | |- | ||
| − | | '''Quality Assurance''' | + | | '''Quality Assurance''' |
| − | | Hasan Ilter (HI) | + | | Jörg Skottke (JSK)<br>Hasan Ilter (HI) |
| − | | Hasan.Ilter@Sun.COM | + | | Joerg.Skottke@Sun.COM><br>Hasan.Ilter@Sun.COM |
|- | |- | ||
| − | | '''Documentation''' | + | | '''Documentation''' |
| − | | | + | | Uwe Fischer (UFI)<br> |
| − | | | + | | Uwe.Fischer@Sun.COM |
|- | |- | ||
| − | | '''User Experience''' | + | | '''User Experience''' |
| − | | | + | | |
| − | Christoph Noack<br> | + | Christoph Noack<br> Frank Loehmann (FL) |
| − | Frank | + | |
| − | | | + | | |
| − | christophnoack@openoffice.org<br> | + | christophnoack@openoffice.org<br> Frank.Loehmann@Sun.COM |
| − | Frank.Loehmann@Sun.COM | + | |
|} | |} | ||
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* Improve the overall interaction quality (e.g. workflow improvements, terminology, essential print options) | * Improve the overall interaction quality (e.g. workflow improvements, terminology, essential print options) | ||
* Create a fresh and usable interface for printing in OpenOffice.org | * 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. | + | * For all of the above: keep changes to limit that can be implemented for OOo 3.3. Further changes can wait for later version. |
| | | | ||
* Additional functionality will not be added (besides the planned N-up printing) | * Additional functionality will not be added (besides the planned N-up printing) | ||
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=== Analysis of the Current State of Printing (OpenOffice 3.1) === | === Analysis of the Current State of Printing (OpenOffice 3.1) === | ||
| − | + | Please refer to the page [[Printerpullpages/Current_State_of_Printing_OOo31|Current State of Printing (OpenOffice.org 3.1)]]. It provides findings about the current state of printing in OpenOffice.org 3.1 by analyzing usage feedback data, workflows and printing dialog screenshots. | |
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=== Use Cases === | === Use Cases === | ||
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The file [http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/w/images/c/c3/Printerpullpages_UseCases_CollectionOfFeedback.odt 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! | The file [http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/w/images/c/c3/Printerpullpages_UseCases_CollectionOfFeedback.odt 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! | ||
| + | |||
| + | '''Preliminary Finding:''' It seems that there is no clear preference for certain print options. These options are used in many different combinations when looking at the whole user base, but each user itself uses only a few "sets" of own printing options. So this might be an indicator to support pre-defined and custom defined printer presets. This proposal has been backed up by the work of Peter (Linux OpenPrinting workgroup) with whom I had a short email discussion concerning this topic. | ||
=== Competitive Analysis === | === 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. | + | Please note that although we do competitive analysis, we won't publish too many information here, e.g. screenshots due to legal restrictions. 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: | + | Another good approach is to have a look at the official documentation of our supported platforms: |
| − | * Apple User Interface Guidelines, [http://developer.apple.com/documentation/ | + | * Apple User Interface Guidelines, [http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGWindows/XHIGWindows.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20000961-BACHBHID The Print Dialog] |
* Microsoft Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines, [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511274.aspx Common Dialogs] (scroll down a bit, since the print dialog is not listed in the TOC) | * Microsoft Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines, [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511274.aspx Common Dialogs] (scroll down a bit, since the print dialog is not listed in the TOC) | ||
* Linux Common Printing Dialog, [http://wiki.openusability.org/printing/index.php/Specification Linux Printing UI Specification], specification created by the Linux Foundation OpenPrinting workgroup available in the OpenUsability.org wiki | * Linux Common Printing Dialog, [http://wiki.openusability.org/printing/index.php/Specification Linux Printing UI Specification], specification created by the Linux Foundation OpenPrinting workgroup available in the OpenUsability.org wiki | ||
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| − | + | Please refer to the page [[Printerpullpages/Competitive_Analysis|Competitive Analysis]]. It collects information on special applications or general printing dialogs. | |
=== Requirements List === | === Requirements List === | ||
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|} | |} | ||
| − | == Design Proposals == | + | == Design Proposals and Idea Collection== |
| − | + | * Please refer to the page [[Printerpullpages/Design_Proposals|Design Proposals]]. Based on requirements, it collects design proposals and rates them - maybe some of the proposals get integrated into OpenOffice.org. | |
| + | * Please refer to the page [[Printerpullpages/Idea_Collection|Idea Collection]]. It collects ideas which may later get evaluated and even integrated. You are invited to '''add your ideas'''! | ||
| + | * N-Up printing is new for other modules than Writer and for Writer it might change. So a specification is needed, how N-Up printing should work. See [[Printerpullpages/N-Up Printing|draft specification of N-Up printing]] for suggestions and issues. | ||
| − | == | + | == Final Design == |
| − | + | * Please refer to the page [[Printerpullpages/History_of_Design_Development|History of Design Development]]. It contains the history of the design development of the Printing Dialog. Thus, you can see how the design evolved over time. | |
| − | + | * Please refer to the page [[Printerpullpages/String_Reviews|String Reviews]]. It is meant for the string reviews and discussions concerning the translation. | |
| − | + | ||
| − | | | + | |
| − | + | === System Independent Printing Dialog === | |
| − | + | ==== Application Independent Design Decisions ==== | |
| − | + | ||
| − | + | This section summarizes the basic design ideas which should be as consistent as possible for all the OpenOffice.org applications. | |
| − | + | ||
| − | + | * General structure of the printing dialog: | |
| − | + | ** Structure options in tabs: We finally decided to use tabs, since the combination of "no layout manager" and the sheer number of options make it impossible to implement a behavior like on Apple Mac OS X. This would have been desirable, since the elements currently available in tab "General" would have been accessible all the time - without changing tabs. | |
| − | + | ** Print Preview: The design decisions are described on the Design Proposals page. | |
| − | + | ** Layout: We tried to respect as much as possible when it comes to the dialog design guidelines for OpenOffice.org. | |
| − | The | + | |
| − | + | * Tab "General": The goal of this tab was to present the most important elements together. Besides this huge advantage, some people might be slightly confused what is available where - the "General" tab also presents application specific information which might be expected under the application specific tabs. | |
| − | + | ** Group "Printer": | |
| + | *** The design generally respects the "Microsoft Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines". Reasons: a) the printer selection is improved for people having only few printing sinks (e.g. printer, PDF creator, fax), b) the largest part of our current user base still uses Microsoft Windows so we are consistent - for the other platforms there might be native printing dialogs in later versions. | ||
| + | *** The button "Preferences..." has originally been introduced to open the driver own printer settings on Microsoft Windows. For Linux still our own "automatically" created dialog will be opened; it may later be possible to move the settings to a more accessible place inside our dialog. For the Mac OS X platform there is no printer settings dialog - the button can be easily omitted to let the dialog look more clear. | ||
| + | ** Group "Printer details": The printer details are hidden since in many cases, a) the information isn't required (private users) and b) the information isn't provided (due to operating system, printing system and given settings). Then, we reduced the number of details since this was a very old design decision to respect each operating system with its different information. Other reasons are given on the wiki page Design Ideas. | ||
| + | ** Group "Range and copies": Slightly improved layout which is based on the original printing dialog, since we have to respect our existing user base. Combined "Range" and "Copies" to let it appear less cluttered. | ||
| + | ** Group "Print": Presents the most important print content settings for each application. This has been a requirement by the application owners, since the experience shows that most people aren't aware of the capabilities. | ||
| + | * Tab "OpenOffice.org ''Application''": The options of all applications have been classified according to their meaning. For details please refer to the page Analysis of the Current State of Printing (OpenOffice 3.1). The following groups have been defined and are used in the given order - but only if there are any options to show. | ||
| + | ** Group "Contents": Contains fine grained settings for enabling/disabling contents. The former options have been improved in their naming and analyzed for their usage frequency. As a result, some of them have been merged or omitted. | ||
| + | ** Group "Color": All color related settings can be found here. | ||
| + | ** Group "Size": Size related settings of either single objects or the whole print page are available here. | ||
| + | ** Group "Pages": Anything which might have impact on adding/removing whole pages is located here. The only exception are the settings for "right/front / left/back" page sides which is rather used for the Page Layout. | ||
| − | + | * Tab "Page Layout": These options do mostly relate to the new N-up printing feature. Since it was pretty hard to find a sufficient interaction concept, you may also be interested in details at the page Analysis of the Current State of Printing (OpenOffice 3.1). | |
| + | ** Group "Layout": This group merges the new N-up printing, brochure printing and the previously "Writer only" feature "Print Options Page View" and the new "add border" feature. In contrast to previous versions, there is a simple interface and custom settings: | ||
| + | *** Simple: Most people "just" want to print, so we introduced pre-defined "pages per sheet" which also automatically sets the page orientation. The values for margins and borders (see below) are both 0, since we assume the following: people will mainly use that feature in Writer, they want unscaled (or maximum sized) output, document page margins are usually defined so that the output won't be trimmed. I'm sure that 99% of all usage scenarios are covered with this simple interface. Additionally, there is an option for brochure printing which is a special case of "N-up" for certain applications. | ||
| + | *** Custom: The selection "custom" provides fine grained settings which have been possible with the "Print Options Page View" - but now for all applications. One exception, we merged some of the settings which control the margins to the page border and the distance between the pages - faster and more usable, we hope. When switching from "simple" to "custom" mode, the current settings of "simple" will be used (distance, margin) to explain what is going on in "simple" mode. To balance the quality of information and the overall tab group layout, we had to split the captions for the margin and distance control - we hope this will work well for all the languages. | ||
| + | ** Group "Page sides": Each application introduced new names and other behavior to select what page sides ("right/front / left/back") should be printed. We merged this into a dropdown and tried to improve the naming to better communicate what e.g. "left page" in Writer means. | ||
| − | + | * Tab "Options": This tab summarizes all less frequent used options whose setting may be desired to be persistent to some extend. Sorry for the name, we lacked a better alternative :-) The upper two options are available in all applications, the lower two only for selected applications. | |
| − | + | ** Element "Print to file": Due to the low usage rate, the options has been moved here. Since this setting isn't visible when an other tab page is active, the print button states either "Print to file..." or "Print". Some details have also been discussed on the talk page of the main printerpullpages wiki site. | |
| − | + | ||
| − | + | ==== Application Specific Design Decisions ==== | |
| − | + | ||
| − | + | ||
| − | + | This section summarizes the application specific print options. These options are mainly based on the ones found in previous versions of OpenOffice.org. If possible, they have been improved. | |
| − | + | ||
| − | + | * Writer: | |
| − | + | ** Tab "General": We moved the "Notes" to the group "Print" since it may be used for "reviewer" comments/changes in general (later version of OOo). | |
| − | + | ** Tab "OpenOffice.org Writer": Number of options reduced, but the flexibility is mainly kept. | |
| − | + | ||
| − | * | + | |
| − | + | ||
| − | * | + | |
| − | + | ||
| − | + | ||
| − | |} | + | * Impress: |
| + | ** Tab "General": For the group "Print", the current design finally makes it possible to select the document defined handout design ({{bug|94055}}). For the custom handout selection, we had to remove the preview due to space restrictions. Hopefully, the new Print Preview is sufficient. | ||
| + | ** Tab "OpenOffice.org Impress": | ||
| + | *** Most of the options have been improved - naming, merged functionality, ... | ||
| + | *** Group "Size": Here, there are some really good improvements. Since it has been decided to get rid of the modal warning dialog (Warning Print Options Dialog (Title "Warning Print Options")), we were able to a) provide the setting "Original size" to directly chose the (former) trim (which now will make it possible to pre-select this entry in Tools - Options to avoid the warning dialog), b) added the setting "Distribute on multiple pages" here (which also was only available in the modal warning dialog). That design let us also get rid of "Default" - which isn't that self-explaining. | ||
| + | * Draw: In General, Draw is very similar to Impress. Differences are e.g. the terminology "Page" instead of "Slide". | ||
| + | ** Tab "OpenOffice.org Draw": Removed the option "Hidden pages" which makes only sense in Impress - it isn't available in Draw. That solves an issue existent in former versions of OpenOffice.org. | ||
| + | * Calc: | ||
| + | ** Tab "General": | ||
| + | *** The naming of the print range selection has been improved - there was an issue about that. Now, we slightly "violate" the OpenOffice.org dialog design directives by removing a group line for "Thereof print", because it is closely related to the upper "Range and copies". | ||
| + | *** Group "Print" not required. | ||
| + | ** Tab "OpenOffice.org Calc": Number of options reduced by 50%! Now there is one remaining option. :-) | ||
| + | * Math: | ||
| + | ** Tab "General": Group "Print" not required. | ||
| + | ** Tab "OpenOffice.org Math": Removed one very old compatibility option. Naming improved to better fit to the names already used in the help. | ||
| + | ** Tab "Page Layout": Does not exist, since we already print only one page. If this changes, then we might re-add it. | ||
| − | + | === Native Printing Dialog === | |
| − | + | ||
| − | + | '''The following description is a first draft and may change.''' | |
| − | + | ||
| − | + | ||
| − | + | ||
| − | + | ||
| − | + | ||
| − | + | ||
| − | + | This section describes the native print dialog for Mac OS X. | |
| − | + | ||
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| − | + | ||
| − | + | ==== General structure of the printing dialog ==== | |
| + | * Mac OS X enables the software to present own sub-groups (Apple calls them features) for the application settings. It has been decided to use add only one to ensure proper distinguishability. The name will be "OpenOffice.org" ($PRODUCTNAME) | ||
| + | * The sub-group will contain the print preview and the print options: | ||
| + | ** The print preview is located on the left. The design of the print preview should be identical to the one in the system independent print dialog. | ||
| + | ** The print options are located on the right. They have to consider additional requirements caused by being located in a native print dialog. The print options are presented in tabs. The tabs and the grouping of the print options will be very similar to the ones in the system independent print dialog to ensure consistency (e.g. to the corresponding help texts). | ||
| + | *** General | ||
| + | *** OpenOffice.org ''Application'' | ||
| + | *** Page Layout | ||
| + | * Some of the options are not required anymore, since the native print dialog - and therefore the native print system - will handle that for itself: | ||
| + | ** Tab "Page Layout": No use of everything related to "pages per sheet". | ||
| + | ** Tab "Options": None of the options required. | ||
| − | + | ==== Application Specific Design Decisions ==== | |
| − | + | * Writer: | |
| − | + | ** Tab "General": Refer to the system independent print dialog description | |
| − | + | ** Tab "OpenOffice.org Writer": Refer to the system independent print dialog description | |
| − | + | ** Tab "Page Layout": | |
| − | + | *** Brochure incl. Order | |
| − | + | *** Include | |
| − | + | * Impress: | |
| − | + | ** Tab "General": Refer to the system independent print dialog description | |
| − | + | ** Tab "OpenOffice.org Draw": Refer to the system independent print dialog description | |
| − | + | ** Tab "Page Layout": | |
| − | + | *** Brochure incl. Order | |
| + | *** Include | ||
| + | * Draw: | ||
| + | ** Tab "General": Not available, since no print option is available | ||
| + | ** Tab "OpenOffice.org Draw": Refer to the system independent print dialog description | ||
| + | ** Tab "Page Layout": | ||
| + | *** Brochure incl. Order | ||
| + | *** Include | ||
| + | * Calc: | ||
| + | ** Tab "General": '''tbd''' (Open Questions: How to handle range and copies referring to sheets?) | ||
| + | ** Tab "OpenOffice.org Calc": Refer to the system independent print dialog description | ||
| + | ** Tab "Page Layout": Not available, since no print option is available | ||
| + | * Math: | ||
| + | ** Tab "General": Not available, since no print option is available | ||
| + | ** Tab "OpenOffice.org Math": Refer to the system independent print dialog description --> Please note that it might be better to provide a non-tab grouping only. There is only one group, so a tab doesn't make sense. | ||
| + | ** Tab "Page Layout": Not available, since no print option is available | ||
| − | + | ==== Open Points ==== | |
| + | * All: Would it be better to merge all "General" and "OpenOffice.org ''Application''" tabs? Although the General tabs are very clear for Writer and Impress, some applications do not feature this kind of tab. That results in only sometimes showing tab "General" - may appear weird to the user... | ||
| + | * All: Is the tab name "General" sufficient, because in the System Independent Print Dialog there are also settings now provided by the native print dialog. Wouldn't it be better to use the group name ("Print", currently in discussion). | ||
| + | * All: How to group the elements, e.g. in the Page Layout tab page with fewer elements? | ||
| + | * Impress/Draw: Is it possible to deactivate the size settings for brochure printing? | ||
| + | * Calc: Definition of tab "General" is missing. | ||
| − | + | === Workflow Design Decision === | |
| − | + | ||
| − | + | As discussed in the section [[Printerpullpages/Current_State_of_Printing_OOo31#Workflow_Analysis|Workflow Analysis (wiki page Current State of Printing in OpenOffice.org 3.1]] the workflows aren't that optimal in certain circumstances. Changes: | |
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| − | + | * '''Changing''' the default for "Warning Transparency Dialog (Title „Warning“)": The default setting for showing the transparency warning will be changed from "true" to "false". The option itself will be kept. | |
| − | * | + | ** Rationale: As discussed in the workflow analysis, the warning dialog is undesired. Initially, there also has been User Feedback data which has discussed at [http://uxopenofficeorg.blogspot.com/2009/06/transparent-decision-making.html Transparent Decision Making] to judge whether it is required or not. Some weeks later, a lot of new data has been analyzed and it has been discovered that the feedback system does not provide all required numbers. Although many effort has gone into getting this data, we lack final results. Nevertheless, we think that the benefit for most users will compensate the potential issues mentioned below. Since the option itself is kept, we can test this behavior thoroughly. |
| − | + | ** Potential issues: Longer printing times (e.g. in networks), increased size of data "printed to file", | |
| − | + | * '''Removing''' "Warning Print Options Dialog (Title "Warning Print Options")": The dialog itself and the option to enable/disable the warning will be removed. | |
| − | + | ** Rationale: The warning dialog is undesired and - in certain circumstances - cannot be avoided by setting the corresponding size settings in advance. Wit the current development, we feature the Print Preview (user can check for problems) and improved size settings. | |
| − | + | ** Potential issues: If users print directly (without using the dialog), some of them might print the data in the wrong size, since there is no Print Preview to check the output in advance. | |
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| − | + | The warning dialogs referred to can be found in the section [[Printerpullpages/Current_State_of_Printing_OOo31#Various_Printer_Warning_Dialogs|Various Printer Warning Dialogs (wiki page Current State of Printing in OpenOffice.org 3.1]]. | |
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| − | === | + | === Other Decisions === |
| − | + | * '''Changing''' the position of the option "Fax" in Writer. It doesn't make sense to select it in the print dialog, so that it will be kept in the Tools - Options dialog only. (Discussion by Philipp and Christoph in an early mail...) | |
| + | * '''Removing''' the "Orientation warning" in the Tools - Options dialog. It was not possible to "force" the warning to appear. (Discussion of Philip and Christoph, phone call 2009-07-13) | ||
== Status and Roadmap == | == Status and Roadmap == | ||
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=== Current State === | === Current State === | ||
| − | * The development happens since quite a few months. | + | * The development happens since quite a few months. Originally planned for OpenOffice.org 3.2 it had to be delayed to 3.3 to provide a sufficient quality. Sorry! |
* '''Development versions:''' Development versions can be found at [ftp://qa-upload.services.openoffice.org/printerpullpages/ ftp://qa-upload.services.openoffice.org/printerpullpages/] | * '''Development versions:''' Development versions can be found at [ftp://qa-upload.services.openoffice.org/printerpullpages/ ftp://qa-upload.services.openoffice.org/printerpullpages/] | ||
| − | * '''Issue Tracker''': All issues | + | * '''Issue Tracker''': All issues referring to “printerpullpages” in the summary or the comments will be listed with [http://www.openoffice.org/issues/buglist.cgi?issue_type=DEFECT&issue_type=ENHANCEMENT&issue_type=FEATURE&issue_type=PATCH&issue_status=UNCONFIRMED&issue_status=NEW&issue_status=STARTED&issue_status=REOPENED&issue_status=RESOLVED&issue_status=VERIFIED&issue_status=CLOSED&email1=&emailtype1=exact&emailassigned_to1=1&email2=&emailtype2=exact&emailreporter2=1&issueidtype=include&issue_id=&changedin=&votes=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=&chfieldvalue=&short_desc=&short_desc_type=allwords&long_desc=&long_desc_type=allwords&issue_file_loc=&issue_file_loc_type=fulltext&status_whiteboard=&status_whiteboard_type=fulltext&keywords=&keywords_type=anytokens&field0-0-0=short_desc&type0-0-0=anywords&value0-0-0=printerpullpages&field0-0-1=longdesc&type0-0-1=anywords&value0-0-1=printerpullpages&cmdtype=doit&order=Reuse+same+sort+as+last+time&Submit+query=Submit+query Extended Issue Tracker Query] |
| − | * '''EIS''': The [http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/EIS EIS] entry for “printerpullpages” is located at [http://tools.services.openoffice.org/EIS2/cws.ShowCWS? | + | * '''Issue Prioritization''': The separate wiki page [[Printerpullpages/Issue_Prioritization|Issue Prioritization]] collects and rates usability issues. In certain cases, the Issue Tracker is sub-optional with regard to importance of issues. |
| + | * '''EIS''': The [http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/EIS EIS] entry for “printerpullpages” is located at [http://tools.services.openoffice.org/EIS2/cws.ShowCWS?Path=DEV300%2Fprinterpullpages http://tools.services.openoffice.org/EIS2/cws.ShowCWS?Path=DEV300%2Fprinterpullpages] | ||
| + | * '''Mercurial Repository''': The web based Mercurial repository can be found here [http://hg.services.openoffice.org/cws/printerpullpages/ http://hg.services.openoffice.org/cws/printerpullpages/] | ||
| + | * More: Have a look at [[#Online_Discussion.2C_Press_Coverage_and_Comments|Online Discussion, Press Coverage and Comments]]. | ||
| − | === | + | === OpenOffice.org 3.3 === |
| − | + | * System Independent Printing Dialog: Provide a cleaned up and well described system independent printing dialog with new features for [http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OOoRelease33 OpenOffice.org 3.3]. | |
| + | * Native Printing Dialog for Mac OS X: Provide cleaned up printer options for Mac OS X. | ||
| + | * Basic workflow improvements ("Warning Print Options Dialog (Title "Warning Print Options")", "Warning Transparency Dialog (Title „Warning“)") | ||
| − | + | === OpenOffice.org Later === | |
| − | + | If there are interesting ideas how to further improve printing in OpenOffice.org, then the development might continue for future version of OpenOffice.org. | |
| + | * Native Printing Dialog for GTK: Philipp said that Caolan, a guy working for RedHat, offered some help to bind the native print dialog in Gnome (GTK). He already blogged about that since quite a long time: [http://blogs.linux.ie/caolan/2005/07/28/gnomeprintui/ 2005-07-28 gnomeprintui], [http://blogs.linux.ie/caolan/2009/07/23/new-print-dialog/ 2009-07-23 New Print Dialog]. | ||
| + | * Native Printing Dialog for Linux: Work with the people from the Linux Foundation OpenPrinting workgroup. First contact has been established since 2009-07-09 with Till and Peter. | ||
| + | * Old Stuff: Solve the remaining issues described on our page [[Printerpullpages/Current_State_of_Printing_OOo31|Current State of Printing (OpenOffice.org 3.1)]]. | ||
| + | * New Stuff: Evaluate new ideas based on our page [[Printerpullpages/Idea_Collection|Idea Collection]]. | ||
| − | + | == Help for Contributors == | |
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| − | + | === Help & Translation === | |
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| − | + | The behavior of the printing dialog has been changed - and so did many of the strings and descriptions. | |
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| − | + | * An overview what has been changed is given at [[#Final_Design|Final Design]]. Worth reading :-) | |
| + | * If you want to judge how much space is left for the translated strings, please have a look at the [[Printerpullpages/History_of_Design_Development#Current_Design_Mockup|Current Design Mockup]]. | ||
| + | * The string reviews and the corresponding discussions are documented at [[Printerpullpages/String_Reviews|String Reviews]] | ||
| + | * Please do '''NOT''' use the terminology listed at [[Printerpullpages#Definition_of_Terms|Definition of Terms]], since it is for development only. | ||
| + | * Additional information of former options are given in the Calc spreadsheet document at [[Printerpullpages/Current_State_of_Printing_OOo31#Source_Data|Source Data]]. Please note that it is currently a bit dated - the Current Design Proposal and the String Review are currently used. | ||
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| − | + | Please note: | |
| − | + | * The dialog for MacOS X (Native Print Dialog) may contain a different distribution of options in comparison to the System Independent Print Dialog. | |
| − | + | * The former printing dialog (e.g. OOo 3.1) did not provide a help button and provided help only in the separate print options dialog window. Now, the print dialog and the options are merged and the new help is opened from within the print dialog - this is a different context from the user's point of view. | |
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| − | + | Please tell us if you miss any important information! | |
| − | + | === QA === | |
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| − | + | Many things changed in this CWS, so - to everyone - please consider to do "real world testings" with the new printing system. Thanks! | |
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| − | |- | + | * An overview what has been changed is given at [[#Final_Design|Final Design]]. Worth reading :-) |
| − | | | + | * Current development builds and links to an issue query can be found at [[Printerpullpages#Current_State|Current State]]. |
| − | + | * Issue template which can be used for new issues at [http://www.openoffice.org/issues/enter_bug.cgi?issue_type=DEFECT;subcomponent=ui;form_name=enter_issue;cc=jsk;issue_file_loc=http%3A%2F%2F;reporter=christophnoack;op_sys=All;maketemplate=Remember%20values%20as%20bookmarkable%20template;comment=;version=DEV300m61;component=framework;priority=P3;assigned_to=pl;short_desc=%5BCWS%20printerpullpages%5D%20;rep_platform=All|CWS Printerpullpages Issue Template] (Component framework, UI, Assigned to pl, CC to jsk, Summary [CWS Printerpullpages], version DEV300m61) | |
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| − | + | Please tell us if you miss any important information! | |
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| − | + | Please find Test case specifications [[PppTestCases|here]] | |
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== Mockups and Screenshots == | == Mockups and Screenshots == | ||
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{| class="prettytable" border="0" | {| class="prettytable" border="0" | ||
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| [[Image:printerpullpages_nup_current.png|512px|thumb|center]] | | [[Image:printerpullpages_nup_current.png|512px|thumb|center]] | ||
| − | | | + | | Screenshot showing the current state of the N-Up tab page in the system independent print dialog. |
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| − | | [[Image: | + | | [[Image:2009-08-09_PrintingDialog_SomehowRealisticVersion.png|512px|thumb|center]] |
| − | | | + | | Mockup showing the current design of the "General" tab page for Calc. Find more mockups on [[/History of Design Development|History of Design Development]] |
| + | |} | ||
| − | + | == Online Discussion, Press Coverage and Comments == | |
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| − | + | *Philipp Lohmann: [http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/one_step_forward_the_next One step forward, the next step back], blog posting, 2008-11-11 | |
| − | + | *Philipp Lohmann: [http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/new_print_ui New Print UI], blog posting, 2009-06-04 | |
| − | + | *Christoph Noack: [http://uxopenofficeorg.blogspot.com/2009/06/transparent-decision-making.html Transparent Decision Making], blog posting, 2009-06-13 | |
| − | + | *Philipp Lohmann: [http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/cws_printerpullpages_delayed_to_ooo CWS printerpullpages delayed to OO.o 3.3], blog posting, 2009-09-03 | |
| − | + | *Christoph Noack: "New Printing UI - Better Printing For OpenOffice.org", OOoCon 2010 presentation ([http://www.ooocon.org/index.php/ooocon/2010/paper/view/281 Abstract], [http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/File:2010-09-02_NewPrintingUI-printerpullpages_Noack.odp '''ODP Presentation File''' (recommended)], [http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/w/images/b/bb/2010-09-02_NewPrintingUI-printerpullpages_Noack.pdf PDF File]), 2010-09-03 | |
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Latest revision as of 16:47, 4 September 2010
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) |
Philipp.Lohmann@Sun.COM |
| Quality Assurance | Jörg Skottke (JSK) Hasan Ilter (HI) |
Joerg.Skottke@Sun.COM> Hasan.Ilter@Sun.COM |
| Documentation | Uwe Fischer (UFI) |
Uwe.Fischer@Sun.COM |
| User Experience |
Christoph Noack |
christophnoack@openoffice.org |
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 |
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Analysis of the Current State of Printing (OpenOffice 3.1)
Please refer to the page Current State of Printing (OpenOffice.org 3.1). It provides findings about the current state of printing in OpenOffice.org 3.1 by analyzing usage feedback data, workflows and printing dialog screenshots.
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!
Preliminary Finding: It seems that there is no clear preference for certain print options. These options are used in many different combinations when looking at the whole user base, but each user itself uses only a few "sets" of own printing options. So this might be an indicator to support pre-defined and custom defined printer presets. This proposal has been backed up by the work of Peter (Linux OpenPrinting workgroup) with whom I had a short email discussion concerning this topic.
Competitive Analysis
Please note that although we do competitive analysis, we won't publish too many information here, e.g. screenshots due to legal restrictions. 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 supported 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
Please refer to the page Competitive Analysis. It collects information on special applications or general printing dialogs.
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 and Idea Collection
- 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.
- Please refer to the page Idea Collection. It collects ideas which may later get evaluated and even integrated. You are invited to add your ideas!
- N-Up printing is new for other modules than Writer and for Writer it might change. So a specification is needed, how N-Up printing should work. See draft specification of N-Up printing for suggestions and issues.
Final Design
- Please refer to the page History of Design Development. It contains the history of the design development of the Printing Dialog. Thus, you can see how the design evolved over time.
- Please refer to the page String Reviews. It is meant for the string reviews and discussions concerning the translation.
System Independent Printing Dialog
Application Independent Design Decisions
This section summarizes the basic design ideas which should be as consistent as possible for all the OpenOffice.org applications.
- General structure of the printing dialog:
- Structure options in tabs: We finally decided to use tabs, since the combination of "no layout manager" and the sheer number of options make it impossible to implement a behavior like on Apple Mac OS X. This would have been desirable, since the elements currently available in tab "General" would have been accessible all the time - without changing tabs.
- Print Preview: The design decisions are described on the Design Proposals page.
- Layout: We tried to respect as much as possible when it comes to the dialog design guidelines for OpenOffice.org.
- Tab "General": The goal of this tab was to present the most important elements together. Besides this huge advantage, some people might be slightly confused what is available where - the "General" tab also presents application specific information which might be expected under the application specific tabs.
- Group "Printer":
- The design generally respects the "Microsoft Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines". Reasons: a) the printer selection is improved for people having only few printing sinks (e.g. printer, PDF creator, fax), b) the largest part of our current user base still uses Microsoft Windows so we are consistent - for the other platforms there might be native printing dialogs in later versions.
- The button "Preferences..." has originally been introduced to open the driver own printer settings on Microsoft Windows. For Linux still our own "automatically" created dialog will be opened; it may later be possible to move the settings to a more accessible place inside our dialog. For the Mac OS X platform there is no printer settings dialog - the button can be easily omitted to let the dialog look more clear.
- Group "Printer details": The printer details are hidden since in many cases, a) the information isn't required (private users) and b) the information isn't provided (due to operating system, printing system and given settings). Then, we reduced the number of details since this was a very old design decision to respect each operating system with its different information. Other reasons are given on the wiki page Design Ideas.
- Group "Range and copies": Slightly improved layout which is based on the original printing dialog, since we have to respect our existing user base. Combined "Range" and "Copies" to let it appear less cluttered.
- Group "Print": Presents the most important print content settings for each application. This has been a requirement by the application owners, since the experience shows that most people aren't aware of the capabilities.
- Group "Printer":
- Tab "OpenOffice.org Application": The options of all applications have been classified according to their meaning. For details please refer to the page Analysis of the Current State of Printing (OpenOffice 3.1). The following groups have been defined and are used in the given order - but only if there are any options to show.
- Group "Contents": Contains fine grained settings for enabling/disabling contents. The former options have been improved in their naming and analyzed for their usage frequency. As a result, some of them have been merged or omitted.
- Group "Color": All color related settings can be found here.
- Group "Size": Size related settings of either single objects or the whole print page are available here.
- Group "Pages": Anything which might have impact on adding/removing whole pages is located here. The only exception are the settings for "right/front / left/back" page sides which is rather used for the Page Layout.
- Tab "Page Layout": These options do mostly relate to the new N-up printing feature. Since it was pretty hard to find a sufficient interaction concept, you may also be interested in details at the page Analysis of the Current State of Printing (OpenOffice 3.1).
- Group "Layout": This group merges the new N-up printing, brochure printing and the previously "Writer only" feature "Print Options Page View" and the new "add border" feature. In contrast to previous versions, there is a simple interface and custom settings:
- Simple: Most people "just" want to print, so we introduced pre-defined "pages per sheet" which also automatically sets the page orientation. The values for margins and borders (see below) are both 0, since we assume the following: people will mainly use that feature in Writer, they want unscaled (or maximum sized) output, document page margins are usually defined so that the output won't be trimmed. I'm sure that 99% of all usage scenarios are covered with this simple interface. Additionally, there is an option for brochure printing which is a special case of "N-up" for certain applications.
- Custom: The selection "custom" provides fine grained settings which have been possible with the "Print Options Page View" - but now for all applications. One exception, we merged some of the settings which control the margins to the page border and the distance between the pages - faster and more usable, we hope. When switching from "simple" to "custom" mode, the current settings of "simple" will be used (distance, margin) to explain what is going on in "simple" mode. To balance the quality of information and the overall tab group layout, we had to split the captions for the margin and distance control - we hope this will work well for all the languages.
- Group "Page sides": Each application introduced new names and other behavior to select what page sides ("right/front / left/back") should be printed. We merged this into a dropdown and tried to improve the naming to better communicate what e.g. "left page" in Writer means.
- Group "Layout": This group merges the new N-up printing, brochure printing and the previously "Writer only" feature "Print Options Page View" and the new "add border" feature. In contrast to previous versions, there is a simple interface and custom settings:
- Tab "Options": This tab summarizes all less frequent used options whose setting may be desired to be persistent to some extend. Sorry for the name, we lacked a better alternative :-) The upper two options are available in all applications, the lower two only for selected applications.
- Element "Print to file": Due to the low usage rate, the options has been moved here. Since this setting isn't visible when an other tab page is active, the print button states either "Print to file..." or "Print". Some details have also been discussed on the talk page of the main printerpullpages wiki site.
Application Specific Design Decisions
This section summarizes the application specific print options. These options are mainly based on the ones found in previous versions of OpenOffice.org. If possible, they have been improved.
- Writer:
- Tab "General": We moved the "Notes" to the group "Print" since it may be used for "reviewer" comments/changes in general (later version of OOo).
- Tab "OpenOffice.org Writer": Number of options reduced, but the flexibility is mainly kept.
- Impress:
- Tab "General": For the group "Print", the current design finally makes it possible to select the document defined handout design (Issue 94055 ). For the custom handout selection, we had to remove the preview due to space restrictions. Hopefully, the new Print Preview is sufficient.
- Tab "OpenOffice.org Impress":
- Most of the options have been improved - naming, merged functionality, ...
- Group "Size": Here, there are some really good improvements. Since it has been decided to get rid of the modal warning dialog (Warning Print Options Dialog (Title "Warning Print Options")), we were able to a) provide the setting "Original size" to directly chose the (former) trim (which now will make it possible to pre-select this entry in Tools - Options to avoid the warning dialog), b) added the setting "Distribute on multiple pages" here (which also was only available in the modal warning dialog). That design let us also get rid of "Default" - which isn't that self-explaining.
- Draw: In General, Draw is very similar to Impress. Differences are e.g. the terminology "Page" instead of "Slide".
- Tab "OpenOffice.org Draw": Removed the option "Hidden pages" which makes only sense in Impress - it isn't available in Draw. That solves an issue existent in former versions of OpenOffice.org.
- Calc:
- Tab "General":
- The naming of the print range selection has been improved - there was an issue about that. Now, we slightly "violate" the OpenOffice.org dialog design directives by removing a group line for "Thereof print", because it is closely related to the upper "Range and copies".
- Group "Print" not required.
- Tab "OpenOffice.org Calc": Number of options reduced by 50%! Now there is one remaining option. :-)
- Tab "General":
- Math:
- Tab "General": Group "Print" not required.
- Tab "OpenOffice.org Math": Removed one very old compatibility option. Naming improved to better fit to the names already used in the help.
- Tab "Page Layout": Does not exist, since we already print only one page. If this changes, then we might re-add it.
Native Printing Dialog
The following description is a first draft and may change.
This section describes the native print dialog for Mac OS X.
General structure of the printing dialog
- Mac OS X enables the software to present own sub-groups (Apple calls them features) for the application settings. It has been decided to use add only one to ensure proper distinguishability. The name will be "OpenOffice.org" ($PRODUCTNAME)
- The sub-group will contain the print preview and the print options:
- The print preview is located on the left. The design of the print preview should be identical to the one in the system independent print dialog.
- The print options are located on the right. They have to consider additional requirements caused by being located in a native print dialog. The print options are presented in tabs. The tabs and the grouping of the print options will be very similar to the ones in the system independent print dialog to ensure consistency (e.g. to the corresponding help texts).
- General
- OpenOffice.org Application
- Page Layout
- Some of the options are not required anymore, since the native print dialog - and therefore the native print system - will handle that for itself:
- Tab "Page Layout": No use of everything related to "pages per sheet".
- Tab "Options": None of the options required.
Application Specific Design Decisions
- Writer:
- Tab "General": Refer to the system independent print dialog description
- Tab "OpenOffice.org Writer": Refer to the system independent print dialog description
- Tab "Page Layout":
- Brochure incl. Order
- Include
- Impress:
- Tab "General": Refer to the system independent print dialog description
- Tab "OpenOffice.org Draw": Refer to the system independent print dialog description
- Tab "Page Layout":
- Brochure incl. Order
- Include
- Draw:
- Tab "General": Not available, since no print option is available
- Tab "OpenOffice.org Draw": Refer to the system independent print dialog description
- Tab "Page Layout":
- Brochure incl. Order
- Include
- Calc:
- Tab "General": tbd (Open Questions: How to handle range and copies referring to sheets?)
- Tab "OpenOffice.org Calc": Refer to the system independent print dialog description
- Tab "Page Layout": Not available, since no print option is available
- Math:
- Tab "General": Not available, since no print option is available
- Tab "OpenOffice.org Math": Refer to the system independent print dialog description --> Please note that it might be better to provide a non-tab grouping only. There is only one group, so a tab doesn't make sense.
- Tab "Page Layout": Not available, since no print option is available
Open Points
- All: Would it be better to merge all "General" and "OpenOffice.org Application" tabs? Although the General tabs are very clear for Writer and Impress, some applications do not feature this kind of tab. That results in only sometimes showing tab "General" - may appear weird to the user...
- All: Is the tab name "General" sufficient, because in the System Independent Print Dialog there are also settings now provided by the native print dialog. Wouldn't it be better to use the group name ("Print", currently in discussion).
- All: How to group the elements, e.g. in the Page Layout tab page with fewer elements?
- Impress/Draw: Is it possible to deactivate the size settings for brochure printing?
- Calc: Definition of tab "General" is missing.
Workflow Design Decision
As discussed in the section Workflow Analysis (wiki page Current State of Printing in OpenOffice.org 3.1 the workflows aren't that optimal in certain circumstances. Changes:
- Changing the default for "Warning Transparency Dialog (Title „Warning“)": The default setting for showing the transparency warning will be changed from "true" to "false". The option itself will be kept.
- Rationale: As discussed in the workflow analysis, the warning dialog is undesired. Initially, there also has been User Feedback data which has discussed at Transparent Decision Making to judge whether it is required or not. Some weeks later, a lot of new data has been analyzed and it has been discovered that the feedback system does not provide all required numbers. Although many effort has gone into getting this data, we lack final results. Nevertheless, we think that the benefit for most users will compensate the potential issues mentioned below. Since the option itself is kept, we can test this behavior thoroughly.
- Potential issues: Longer printing times (e.g. in networks), increased size of data "printed to file",
- Removing "Warning Print Options Dialog (Title "Warning Print Options")": The dialog itself and the option to enable/disable the warning will be removed.
- Rationale: The warning dialog is undesired and - in certain circumstances - cannot be avoided by setting the corresponding size settings in advance. Wit the current development, we feature the Print Preview (user can check for problems) and improved size settings.
- Potential issues: If users print directly (without using the dialog), some of them might print the data in the wrong size, since there is no Print Preview to check the output in advance.
The warning dialogs referred to can be found in the section Various Printer Warning Dialogs (wiki page Current State of Printing in OpenOffice.org 3.1.
Other Decisions
- Changing the position of the option "Fax" in Writer. It doesn't make sense to select it in the print dialog, so that it will be kept in the Tools - Options dialog only. (Discussion by Philipp and Christoph in an early mail...)
- Removing the "Orientation warning" in the Tools - Options dialog. It was not possible to "force" the warning to appear. (Discussion of Philip and Christoph, phone call 2009-07-13)
Status and Roadmap
Current State
- The development happens since quite a few months. Originally planned for OpenOffice.org 3.2 it had to be delayed to 3.3 to provide a sufficient quality. Sorry!
- Development versions: Development versions can be found at ftp://qa-upload.services.openoffice.org/printerpullpages/
- Issue Tracker: All issues referring to “printerpullpages” in the summary or the comments will be listed with Extended Issue Tracker Query
- Issue Prioritization: The separate wiki page Issue Prioritization collects and rates usability issues. In certain cases, the Issue Tracker is sub-optional with regard to importance of issues.
- EIS: The EIS entry for “printerpullpages” is located at http://tools.services.openoffice.org/EIS2/cws.ShowCWS?Path=DEV300%2Fprinterpullpages
- Mercurial Repository: The web based Mercurial repository can be found here http://hg.services.openoffice.org/cws/printerpullpages/
- More: Have a look at Online Discussion, Press Coverage and Comments.
OpenOffice.org 3.3
- System Independent Printing Dialog: Provide a cleaned up and well described system independent printing dialog with new features for OpenOffice.org 3.3.
- Native Printing Dialog for Mac OS X: Provide cleaned up printer options for Mac OS X.
- Basic workflow improvements ("Warning Print Options Dialog (Title "Warning Print Options")", "Warning Transparency Dialog (Title „Warning“)")
OpenOffice.org Later
If there are interesting ideas how to further improve printing in OpenOffice.org, then the development might continue for future version of OpenOffice.org.
- Native Printing Dialog for GTK: Philipp said that Caolan, a guy working for RedHat, offered some help to bind the native print dialog in Gnome (GTK). He already blogged about that since quite a long time: 2005-07-28 gnomeprintui, 2009-07-23 New Print Dialog.
- Native Printing Dialog for Linux: Work with the people from the Linux Foundation OpenPrinting workgroup. First contact has been established since 2009-07-09 with Till and Peter.
- Old Stuff: Solve the remaining issues described on our page Current State of Printing (OpenOffice.org 3.1).
- New Stuff: Evaluate new ideas based on our page Idea Collection.
Help for Contributors
Help & Translation
The behavior of the printing dialog has been changed - and so did many of the strings and descriptions.
- An overview what has been changed is given at Final Design. Worth reading :-)
- If you want to judge how much space is left for the translated strings, please have a look at the Current Design Mockup.
- The string reviews and the corresponding discussions are documented at String Reviews
- Please do NOT use the terminology listed at Definition of Terms, since it is for development only.
- Additional information of former options are given in the Calc spreadsheet document at Source Data. Please note that it is currently a bit dated - the Current Design Proposal and the String Review are currently used.
Please note:
- The dialog for MacOS X (Native Print Dialog) may contain a different distribution of options in comparison to the System Independent Print Dialog.
- The former printing dialog (e.g. OOo 3.1) did not provide a help button and provided help only in the separate print options dialog window. Now, the print dialog and the options are merged and the new help is opened from within the print dialog - this is a different context from the user's point of view.
Please tell us if you miss any important information!
QA
Many things changed in this CWS, so - to everyone - please consider to do "real world testings" with the new printing system. Thanks!
- An overview what has been changed is given at Final Design. Worth reading :-)
- Current development builds and links to an issue query can be found at Current State.
- Issue template which can be used for new issues at Printerpullpages Issue Template (Component framework, UI, Assigned to pl, CC to jsk, Summary [CWS Printerpullpages], version DEV300m61)
Please tell us if you miss any important information!
Test case specifications
Please find Test case specifications here
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.
 |
Screenshot showing the current state of the N-Up tab page in the system independent print dialog. |
 |
Mockup showing the current design of the "General" tab page for Calc. Find more mockups on History of Design Development |
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
- Philipp Lohmann: CWS printerpullpages delayed to OO.o 3.3, blog posting, 2009-09-03
- Christoph Noack: "New Printing UI - Better Printing For OpenOffice.org", OOoCon 2010 presentation (Abstract, ODP Presentation File (recommended), PDF File), 2010-09-03
