Printerpullpages/Current State of Printing OOo31

This page is part of the CWS printerpullpages. It provides findings about the current state of printing in OpenOffice.org 3.1 by analyzing usage feedback data, workflows and printing dialog screenshots.

Usage of Printing Features and Options

Source Data

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. Is each option really necessary, can it be well understood? Most of the data is currently provided in several Calc documents which get (hopefully) updated regularly.

File:Current Dialogs ListOfAllPrintDialogElements.ods: List of all printing dialog elements and options with regard to their meaning, understandability and necessity. It also includes developer comments, which I have to thank for. Worth reading and commenting ;-) Currently, this is the most important document on this page.
File:2009-07-04 UserFeedbackData PrintingAnalysis.ods: Based on the first User Feedback Data there is a short analysis considering Writer, Impress, Draw and (partly) Math. Please note that the User Feedback system still has the drawback that some of the sources of function requests can not be identified. Elements that are ambiguous (to me) are marked with '???'.
File:Current PrintingOptions SettingsInDocumentFiles.odt: This document summarizes all printer dialog related settings which are stored in the native OpenOffice.org files (settings.xml). As far as the settings could be identified, they have been transferred to the file “List of all Print Dialog Elements”. Issue: Even for the same module (e.g. Writer), only a subset of all options is saved in the document.

This is just an early preview how the printing dialog is used.

Note: The data is based upon a previous version of "2009-07-04 UserFeedbackData PrintingAnalysis.ods", so please read the description how the data has been acquired.

Printing Dialogs

The sum OK and Cancel events are the reference for the number of uses for the dialog. Then, for each of the printer dialog elements the usage frequency is calculated on that data. The usage frequency is given by all events of each element (e.g. more/less/modify for spin fields) which will lead to inconsistencies (unknown until we can analyse the exact sequence of how elements were used). Nevertheless, for all modules (if possible) the average and standard deviation have been calculated. Date of creation 2009-07-05.

Module	Name	Average [%]	Standard Deviation [%]	Comments / Finding
All Modules	OK	93.7	10.0	Only for Impress. the part of Cancel is extreme (21.3%). Why?
All Modules	Number of copies	37.8	10.6	The usage of Number of copies is slightly higher for Writer and Draw. (But. all events count.)
All Modules	Pages	23.3	6.5
All Modules	None (Pages Text Field)	22.8	6.3
All Modules	Properties	22.5	6.8	In Impress and Draw. properties are set twice that often.
All Modules	Name	14.4	1.4
Calc	Selected cells	13.2	(none)
Impress	Slides per page	11.2	(none)
All Modules	Cancel	6.3	10.0	refer to OK
All Modules	Options	4.9	3.6	In Impress. the options are far more used (4 times as much in comparison with Writer and Calc).
Impress	Vertical	3.3	(none)
Impress	Horizontal	2.7	(none)
Calc	Selected sheets	1.3	(none)
All Modules	Collate	1.1	0.3
All Modules	All pages	1.0	0.4
Writer. Impress. Draw	Selection	0.8	0.4
All Modules	Print to file	0.6	0.2
All Modules	Help	0.2	0.1	In Impress. the need for help is maximal (0.3%).

Workflow Analysis

Workflows

The following selected workflow descriptions are used to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of OpenOffice.org printing. These workflows are not selected according their occurence, they are just meant to be examples to better understand printing.

Name

Steps and Finding

User prints in Draw directly

Steps:

User has document with certain objects (even transparent ones)
User selects one transparent object
User selects toolbar icon "Print File Directly (PRINTER NAME)"
Dialog "Printing Selection" pops up ("Do you want to print the selection or the entire document?" [Selection / All / Cancel])
- Case A1: User selects "Selection"
- Case A2: User selects "All"
Only for case 2: Dialog "Transparency Warning" pops up ("The document contains transparent objects. Should ... reduced?" [Yes / No / Cancel])
- Case B1: User selects "Yes" (reduce transparency)
- Case B2: User selects "No" (don't reduce transparency)
Document is printed

Finding: Why are there so many modal dialogs, even when the users wants to print "quickly". Besides that, why is there a modal dialog? Wouldn't it be better to use a non-modal dialog which gives the user e.g. 15 seconds time to decide. If there is no decision within this time, the printing could start using defaults.

User prints a poster in Draw

Steps:

User designed a poster in Draw and set the margings to "0". Then he wants to print it on his inkjet printer which isn't able to printer borderless.
User selects File -- Print... -- OK
Dialog "Warning Printing Options" pops up ("The page settings do not match the print range. ..." [Fit page to print range / Print on multiple pages / Trim])
- Case A1: User selects "Fit page to print range"
- Case A2: User selects "Print on multiple pages"
- Case A3: User selects "Trim"
Document is printed

Finding: If the document was designed on the same computer, then the user has already been warned concerning the limited print range when the page margins have been set (Format -- Page...). When printing is started, the user is warned concerning the print range. In case he wants to have the true scale, then there is no way to pre-define "trim" for the output (the same is true for "Print on multiple pages"). The user gets the "Warning Print Options" every time he prints!

Note: The formulation of "Fit page to print range" in "Warning Print Options" is different in comparison to "Fit to page" in the print options.

Note: If page options "brochure" is selected, then no "Warning Print Options" (paper size) is given, even if objects cross the printable range.

User prints to file

Steps:

User has a document which should be saved to a file (in a printer language)
User selects File -- Print...
User activates "Print to file"
User clicks on "OK"
A file selector dialog pops up
The user enters / selects the file to be printed in
- Case A1: File doesn't exist yet
- Case A2: File already exists
Only for case A2: The dialog "Save" pops up ("The file already exists. Overwrite?" [Yes / No]).

Notes concerning the dialog "Save" (OOo 3.1 from Ubuntu PPA):

Short: The dialog is ... bad!
The title is wrong, since it should state something like "Overwrite existing file?"
The buttons are not self explaining ([Yes / No])
The main dialog text is surrounded by '"' (quotation marks) - why?
The dialog looks "alien", because it is provided by GTK. Here, the button order is different to the OOo dialogs.
On my computer, the dialog is hidden behind (!!!) the printing dialog - and OOo appears to be frozen.

General Findings

The printing system is very flexible, but sometimes complicated and complex!
We have far to many modal dialogs!
Each print (warning) dialog looks different!
We have inconsistent options!

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 Usage of Printing Features and Options