Printerpullpages
Introduction
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.
The I-Team ...
| 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 | Hasan Ilter (HI) | Hasan.Ilter@Sun.COM |
| Documentation | tbd | tbd |
| User Experience |
Christoph Noack |
christophnoack@openoffice.org |
Requirements
Scope of the Work
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Current State of Printing in OpenOffice.org 3.0
Features and Options Revisited
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. Moreover, these options have been added over time and may require some polishing to improve the understandability. Most of the data is currently provided in several Calc documents which get (hopefully) updated regularly.
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 #Features_and_Options_Revisited
Print Dialogs
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Print Options Dialogs
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Various Printer Dialogs
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PDF Export Dialog
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Competitive Analysis
General
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
Acrobat Reader
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Notice that you can set the arrangement of the pages on the paper sheet in drop down list 'Page Order'. That might be interesting for OOo, because OOo is used in different language and some users writing in e.g. Hebrew or Asian languages might have other preferred arrangements. Notice also the glider under the preview. There you can "scroll" through all sheets to see whether they are printed as desired. The 'page scaling' drop down list contains also the option 'brochure'. The fields beneath change according to the 'page scaling' choice. The sheet orientation is taken from the printer properties. That is more comfortable in OOo, where you set landscape or portrait in the printing dialog. Provided by Regina ... thanks! |
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Native Printer Driver Dialog on WinXP from HP Color Jet 2605
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| The pictures show details of a native printer properties dialog of an HP Color Laser Jet 2605 on WinXp. The printer itself can do a lot of things, which can be set in OOo printer dialog. But this is a modern printer with an actual driver. I doubt that older printers or drivers for Linux allow all of this settings.
Even in this modern driver an option for customize N-Up arrangement is missing, the feature for n identical pages on one sheet is not available and the N-Up does not allow margins and spacing. Provided by Regina ... thanks! | ||||
Definition of Terms
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Design Proposals
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Status and Roadmap
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Current Development Status
The development happens since quite a few months. Recently, UX jumped in and will try to further improve the dialog and the overall working steps concerning printing.
Development Versions and Stuff
- Development versions can be found at: ftp://qa-upload.services.openoffice.org/printerpullpages/
- EIS entry: http://tools.services.openoffice.org/EIS2/cws.ShowCWS?logon=true&Id=7202&Path=DEV300%2Fprinterpullpages
Mockups and Screenshots
Print Dialog (system independent)
Current state of the N-Up page
Online Discussion, Press Coverage and Comments
- Philipp Lohmann: New Print UI, blog posting, 2009-06-04
- Philipp Lohmann: One step forward, the next step back, blog posting, 2008-11-11
