Difference between revisions of "Talk:User Experience/DocumentCheck"

Latest revision as of 11:03, 9 December 2009

Hi Christoph,

I proposed something similar, for Impress masterpages in my Renaisance proposal: Proposal_by_Jörg_Wartenberg Have look at the second mockup in the section Navigator for 'Edit Template' Mode. I proposed a treeview there, which shows problems in a masterpage hierarchical. It's embedded there in the normal OOo Navigator.

Some remarks to your proposal:

• I would remove the Update-Button. The list should be always in sync with the actual document.
• It would be nice, if the dialog would have something like a Fix-Button, which resolves a problem if possible. For example, if a non-standard Font is used, it could embed the font in the document. Of course, not every problem is automatically fixable.
• I miss the UI element to add own rules. How can I add them? My proposal would be, to implement all these rules as small OOo basic scripts.

Best Regards, Jörg

Hi Jörg! I'm sorry that I missed that fact of your proposal (or at least didn't remember well enough). But that is the reason for sharing the idea, to get some comments. So thanks for being the first one ;-)

Just a few thoughts concerning your thoughts: The mockups are really meant to just communicate the idea. The functionality may indeed look totally different - the desired features are outlined in a separate section. The fix button functionality is currently represented by the little action links (e.g. "Open Digital Signatures"). But, if we really can find some really good automatic behavior - let's go for that, too. How the "own rules" are added is still open; at least they could be selected by the drop-down. I know that many things are open, so let's collect further wishes and requirements and then make up an excellent UI.

So if you have anything special in mind, then feel free to add it (or link to the proposal page).

Thank you! --ChristophNoack 12:53, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

This feature would help us (the City of Largo) greatly. I would say 99% of the comments about 'OpenOffice' are really about a lack of skills in document construction. They would make the same mistakes in MS Office, but its easy to blame the tools.

My comments and ideas that you can merge into the proposal:

• A big problem that you mentioned but to me needs more details is the whole concept of embedded media files. After spending years trying to teach users the concept of size of photos it's clear we aren't making progress. We sometimes are using the extent of their skills just to get photos from a camera into OpenOffice; and then you have to try and tell them the photos are too big. Users perceive that when you resize a photo that it's making it smaller somehow. They don't realized the whole photos is being stored in the resulting document.
• Part of the 'fix' process should be a checkbox to allow them to shrink photos to the size they are in the document. They would have to be warned obviously that once done, they won't be able to make the photos bigger again. This would reduce document footprints greatly.
• When exporting to PDF this same logic should be performed. Right now PDF gladly accepts a 10 megapixel photos and stores it right into the document making it much larger than it needs to be. PDF content is almost always meant to email or place on the web...and big files are bad in both of these case.
• The check feature should also check for certain wrong construction methods. We call them 'typewriter techniques'. If you click in the front of a picture and then use your space bar to center the image, that's wrong. If you use tabs and hard returns to simulate a hanging indent, that's wrong. It would be nice to come up with several construction techniques that should *never* be done, and then at least warn them of this fact.

I'm on the IRC all the time, hit me up anytime. 'dave_largo'

Hi Christoph, I like your idea. Thanks for using those brain cells of yours to the benefit of all. Let's see where this brainstorming leads us.

Hi Dave, I really liked your points and wanted to add to them a bit. I think highlighting "wrong construction methods" is a great idea and it can be expanded to show the user how to do it right. Akin to your suggestion that the Document Check tool would offer a button for resizing photos when the photos are too big, if the user is using inefficient/awkward hard formatting, then the Document Checker or Document Reviewer (I'm playing with names because I am not convinced by Document Check) would suggest the correct formatting. This could be used to "teach" the user about the best practices. Of course, this is not meant as a bandaid for poor usability of features, but more in the sense of "Hey, did you know you can do it another way?" I learned to set up documents on a typewriter when I was in school, so I totally understand the users who try to do word processing using the skills they were taught. So now we could use the results of the Document Checker analysis to teach them new tricks, but context-based and as needed, so they will stick in the users' minds. The solution has to be concise and we would be smart to ask the Help/Documentation people for their assistance, but I think with some thought a learning effect can be achieved without bogging down the tool. Maybe a button like "Show Me a Better Solution" that leads to the Help file with the directions, or, in a more advanced implementation, opens the correct dialog (where there already is a Help button in case the user needs directions). Not sure what the technical possibilities are, but hey, this is brainstorming. ;-)