Difference between revisions of "UX OpenOffice.org Writer 3.1 Planning"

Revision as of 09:01, 29 July 2008

What drives you nuts?

• Hyperlink can not be removed by hyperlink dialogue/menu
  • Do no show Cursur while single click
  • Do not spell

• Add Landscape page style to built-in styles for Writer

• Please add "Navigator" to the view menu

• If I get some input from UX regarding issue http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=89315 for an UI inconsistency, I would do this myself for 3.1 as well.

• Provide change case for: Toggle case, First Letter Capitalized and Sentence case (2x)
  • I'd really like a resolution to the silly ommission of the "title case" / "invert case" (that actually change the text, not apply a style) (issue http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1601) that annoys users used to this facility in Abiword / winword.

• • Another thing we see a lot of on the forums is people who can't find (because it isn't there) and then who cannot believe it when we tell them it isn't there - an option to change the case of a selection to Title Case. They have Format > Change Case > Uppercase and Lowercase - why not Title Case as well?

• Insert Column/Row in Tables same as in Calc
• Allow to insert a text row, if table is located at the first position.
• Improve UI of Status Bar
  • on-Mose Over for Icons
  • Get Rid of Borders
  • Left Click on Items

• Page styles

It's pretty irritating to define two sets of page styles (chapter start + verso-recto page spread) for front matter and main matter, when the only difference is the page numbering style! If page styles could inherit the way paragraph styles do, it would be easier. (There might be a way to accomplish this with clever use of variables & functions, but nobody online knows about it. In googlis non est, ergo non est.)

• Drag and Drop (2x)
  • Drag and drop has been driving me wild for years - see eg http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=19816
  • Correct internal, external D&D
  • Select Spaces behind word
  • 50% Transparancey for objects during drag

• Object Anchoring
  • mentioned earlier by someone. Whenever I try to modify the parameters of an object, the other objects on the same page suddenly change positions.
  • Change Default to Character Binding

• Change Tracking

I also hate the current (2.4.1) change tracking feature, but it is supposedly resolved in 3.0

• Typography
  • When changing text attributes like bold, italics, sub- and superscript, the results are often unpredictable. Especially when I try to enter an index in between existing letters, and I choose subscript, then the whole word goes subscript. But at other times, when I scroll up and down, so that display is refreshed, the index shows correctly - but not always!

• Fields
  • I haven't been using much the feature of "fields", like data fields from a database, or cross-links within the document, but I tried that a couple of times and it was a great pain and disaster. In particular - I tried to use a OO.Base file with bibliography information to make references in a thesis. I failed miserably, but it's possible that I just didn't know the trick. Anyways - it would be nice if it worked without any tricks.

• Bulleted and Numbered Lists
  • Right now, that would be how OOo handles bulleted and numbered lists, especially when you want to "continue previous numbering". I am really looking forward to having this fixed in 3.1 as promised in http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=81739

• Bookmarks: editing the contents of selection bookmarks straight forward, is impossible (issue http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=19816, http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=19816, and related bookmark issues). The workarounds make people (especially the ones that do not welcome the migration, among which are basic users) say: why does this have to be so complicated?

• Conversion to .doc with different headers/footers 1st and other page, looses header content of next page

(issue http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=19816) What worked in 1.1.x, still is not fixed in the current version :-(

• Page background cannot be outside page margins

(issue http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=9370) Limits possibilities, forces for nasty workarounds, problem in interoperability.

• All issues regarding exchange of documents with versions of MsOffice

Whenever possible to fix: every improvement helps.

• Movements/effects in presentations not smooth

(issue http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=85029). It's not fine to have to advice the people that use Impress (often higher in the hierarchy) to take an older version of OOo.

• pasting images from HTML content
  • Hell yes, this drives me nuts too! I consider it really

counterintuitive to just link.

• outside screen margin
  • Most time I work in "Page layout" view with "Zoom factor = Fit width".

My complaint is the outside screen margin (gray-colored) is too wide, which reduces the working space. Is there any special reason we need such a large margin? Actually, it is much larger than that of MS Word. Reducing this margin does not change the look of "page", I guess.

In addition, there is no easy "zoom" icons: "Optimal", "Fit width", etc. It requires at least two mouse click.

• Writer as an HTML or XML editor?
  • Do we really need to perpetuate Writer as an HTML or XML editor?On the forum (http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/index.php) it comes up time and time again that Writer is not particularly good at either of these tasks. There there are any number of other freely available tools out there for these tasks. It suspect it will take a good bit of development to bring these two items up to the expected level of performance. I suggest we remove these features. In my mind I just don't see these functions as a good fit in an Office productivity suite - even if they were made to be as good as the users want them to be.
  • Actually, I don't think that OpenOffice.org should integrate web features. I think it should stick with being just a word processor - no need to throw in extra stuff - that would only make OpenOffice.org bloated and more confusing. But, yes, I would keep the HTML export feature.

What works pretty well?

• I managed to do all my work, write my thesis and whatever I would want

to, so I guess Openoffice.org is great already.

My most wanted feature is:

• Platform Conform Keyboard Mapping (Supportt Win, Gnome, Mac OSX)

• Tab-Key in Forms
  • Use of the "tab"key to go to the next field, when filling forms.
  • Fields: tabbing through document with fill-in fields. (issue http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=33737): nasty point in migrations

• Easier table selection/management I'd like to see easier table selection/management (in other words, treat tables more like shapes; this would allow for easier selection, resizing, movement, and deletion - here's the concept art:

• Color Picker (2x) Also, I'd like to see a good color picker (I suggest one similar to what the

Mac has), eliminating the "Colors" tab under Options, and, lastly, I'd like to see the Options dialog thoroughly simplified.

• easy implementation of OO.Base - based bibliography into the writer document

• Cool'er interface
• Scaling of Draw images do not scale fonts I always need to "paste special" as "GDI object" to be able to scale. It would be soooo nice, if I could paste Draw object, scale it as I want, and then doubleclick to edit, if I want...

• Final Release of notes2

I'm really looking forward to the final release of notes2 and the

• What about TABS?
  • When I have multiple windows open, which I often to, it does clog up my taskbar, especially when I'm on windows, since ubuntu has multiple desktops. As a matter of fact, I had to install a desktop manager on XP so I can organize my windows when I work with OOo.

• Paste Text
  • Change defaults of Paste Special
  • Something that would be VERY good is shortcut to change pasted text's
  • I am not familiar with the MS Office functionality, so I am curious now: how is it different from paste special unformatted? (ctrl + shift + V) which makes the pasted text take the attributes of the surrounding text?
  • In practice, none. But is a handy shortcut for that. An average user wouldn't like to use anything besides "ctrl + v" to paste something.
  • I agree. I also prefer the way MSOffice does paste (I also always use "Ctrl-V, remember, Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-Shift-V, choose, Enter", but that takes waaay too long and is really annoying...). Perhaps we could use a contextual snippet for pasted text?
  • About the "Paste special" using ctrl+shift+v - this is one of the best features of OO! I consider myself an "average user", and I can't live without this keyboard shortcut.
  • MSWord has this fancy click-click-click- (and x100 times click) paste feature, which is pretty useless, because you waste your time on clicking and moving your mouse instead of real work. It may look fancy, but it's not the purpose of a text editor to look fancy. However, for the sake of the users that are switching to OO from MSO, there could be a BIG button somewhere, to make all settings and shortcuts work MSO-like, possibly including "fanciness". This won't hurt anyone and may convince more people to switch.

• Outline View

(I never understood what is wrong with the navigator... maybe a quick fix could be to isolate the headings structure view from the other functionalities of the navigator and make it appear as a full size window. The thing is that many people complain about the lack of the outline view whereas it is there).

• Full OpenType support. I'd settle for the ability to print & export to PDF, but while I'm asking I'll already ask for full support: alternate glyph sets, small-caps & superscript/subscript from the font if it has those features, &c.

• Music Notation
• PDF Import