Writer/ToDo/ODF Enhancement

Intro

MS Word and OOo Writer fare proorly when compared with high end publishing software.

I will describe here some advanced features that make the difference between a high end publishing application and ordinary office bundles.

Unfortunately, the ODF file specification can NOT currently handle these features. Therefore, it will be necessary in a first step to extend and modify the ODF-specification, while fully implementing this feature at a later time-point.

Fixed Lower Boundary for Text and Objects

Description

This is covered by issue 79877.

The lower margin of all document pages shall be kept constant. Any objects (like text, images, tables, ...) that delimit the lower margin of the page shall extend up to this Common Lower Boundary. This gives a professional touch to the document. [The last page in the document shall be exempted from this constraint.]

This feature can be applied to enable:

• the same lower boundary for every page in the document
• the same lower boundary for every column in a multi-column page

Lower Boundary: refers to the baseline of the Writer object / last text line at the bottom of the page.

Competing Product Analysis

MS Word XP:

does NOT have this feature. Unfortunately, this is a very poor comparator when it comes to high end publishing software.

[I do NOT have access to newer MS products.]

High End Publishing Software:

I am aware of this feature since at least 1997. This is now 10 years old. Many high ranking journals publish articles formatted in this way: see e.g. this article published in 1997 in Clinical Infectious Diseases (such old content can be accessed freely without a registration). For the full list of available journal issues, see CID site (1 year old issues are usually free). Nature is another journal that publishes articles formatted this way (unfortunately there is NO free access).

Actually, I know a dozen of high ranking journals that use for a number of years now this publishing feature.

EXAMPLES

See articles published in Clinical Infectious Diseases over the last 10 years depicting this behaviour.

IMPLEMENTATION

Currently, the ODF-file format does NOT allow to save such information. Therefore, in a first step it is necessary to modify and extend the ODF-specification. I recommend doing this in the OOo 3.0 time-frame.

This feature should be then implemented proper in a second step, somewhere in the OOo 3.x time-frame. However, some preparatory work should be done prior to OOo 3.0, too.

IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS

The line spacing and spacing between various writer-objects (images, tables, paragraphs) should be increased automatically, so that the last line on the page / in each column will have a pre-specified baseline.

A similar discussion took already place on the OASIS mailing list (2-4? months ago), though I don't know IF any progress was made on this issue.

Discoleo 15:06, 22 July 2007 (CEST)