Printerpullpages/Idea Collection

This page is part of the CWS printerpullpages. It collects ideas which may later get evaluated and even integrated. You are invited to add your ideas!

Date Raised	Source	Summary	Status	Details
???	I-Team Specification	Replace Print Preview Printing	Accepted	Currently, Writer provides very flexible N-up capabilities. This should be made available to all applications – via the new print dialog.
???	I-Team	Improve Workflows	New	Besides the printing dialog, the concepts and the handling of printing options is difficult in OpenOffice.org (currently we just provide a list of options which have to be combined in a useful manner – here the user has to know exactly what to do). Another example is the work-flow breaking dialog handling when printing. More information can be found in the blog post Transparent Decision Making. So this is no real “idea”, it is more a reminder to keep an eye on that.
2009-06-11	I-Team	Contextual Information Bar	New	As discussed in “Improve Workflows”, there are currently a number of modal dialogs which might interrupt the workflow. So how about a contextual information bar which informs only (e.g. for wrong page sizes, transparency, gradients, ...)? How about adding a contextual information bar in the dialog itself... On the other hand, it would be better to get rid of all these additional informations, warnings and decisions. Open Questions: If people print via shortcut, then the print dialog is omitted. What to do? If native dialogs are used, then we miss the flexibility to add this kind of warning.
???	I-Team	Harmonize printing and PDF export	New	Currently, the capabilities of printing and PDF export differ a lot (Example: There is no way to export handouts in Impress.) Why not harmonize that?
2009-06-14	I-Team	Printer Presets	New	Currently, we provide a lot of printer settings which have to be combined by the user. Generally, users use only a small number of combinations, since they are editing similar documents. So they might just use settings for "draft" or "final output". Print settings which could be customized could help here (costomized: edited, saved, loaded, deleted). Some competitors already offer this kind of functionality.
2009-06-14	Regina	multiple copies of a one page document on one paper sheet	New	Use case: You need a lot of DIN A5 sheets to distribute flyers or for to give the sheets to your pupils in your classroom. You write a DIN A5 document. But DIN A5 paper is more expensive than DIN A4 paper. So you want to print the same document twice on a DIN A4 paper. That is not possible up to now. Besides the Issue 67687 , have a look in the internet forums, you see that people are searching for that feature but get only workarounds or have to buy special software. For example http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=65019 or http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=30747 or the workaround for Word http://www.gmayor.com/print_multiple_copies.htm
2009-06-16	Regina	Assistance for envelope printing	New	Printing envelopes still belongs to the tasks which most failures. OOo should use informations about the printer (for example from the PPD-file) to help the users. For example, OOo can show how to insert the envelop, or show, what position the envelope must have compared with the standard paper sheet.
2009-07-04	Christoph	Merge change tracking and notes	New	Issue: In Writer, currently there is no common handling for the printing of Notes or handling of Change Tracking. If tracked changes are enabled in the document, they are also printed. There is no way to enable/disable these „reviewer markups“. Proposal: Maybe something to change/merge for further releases? Open Question: Maybe also Calc is affected, since it also supports change tracking.
2009-08-09	Christoph	Further harmonize printing options	New	Issue: Why should we provide "Colors" (original colors, grayscale, black&white) to Draw/Impress only? Does it make sense to make it available to all document types? Proposal: Harmonize the options.
2009-08-09	Christoph	Easy handling of printing options defaults	New	Issue: Usually (but not always!), the settings of printing options which are located in the printing dialog are saved on a per document bases. Settings located in the Tools - Options are made available to all newly created documents. But, many people are not aware of this fact. Proposal: If we don't go for printer setting presets, it might make sense to add a functionality in the printing dialog to make these settings persistent (to e.g. store defaults like in Tools -- Options).
2009-10-07	Regina	Inform the user when selected sheets have print range "none"	???	Issue: The user might not know, why a worksheet is not printed although he has selected it. So an information like "5 worksheets have print range "none" and are not printed" would be helpful. For details of this problem see Issue 47600 and discussion "Issue 47600 Calc : default print ranges" on discuss@ux.openoffice.org
2009-12-01	Regina	Inform the user about the actual paper sheet size and maybe about document page or selection size.	New	Please note: The topic is currently moved to Printerpullpages/ContextualInformation. Please add ideas and comments there. Issue: The automatically chosen paper sheet size might be surprising. Sometimes the user cannot even guess the size, because an automatic scaling happens. Issue 107331 Therefore show at least the actual paper size near the preview. Here are two proposals, one using a measure line, the other using text. I've added two more proposals --ChristophNoack 19:42, 6 December 2009 (UTC) Answer 2010-02-01 PL: The above proposals look nice, however the text "will be scaled to" is factually incorrect; some of our applications (impress, calc) will layout to the printer specified paper anyway, so the problem does not occur there. Others (writer, draw) will request paper sizes according to what is specified in the document. The contents will then not be scaled in any way. Instead the contents will be printed centered. Perhaps we could find a compromise here, something of the form Crhistoph proposed, but saying "The document specified paper size B5 (<x> cm * <y> cm) is unavailable, instead the current printer paper size A4 (<x> cm * <y> cm) will be used". This would appear over the preview if a mismatch between requested paper size and printer paper size occurs (as far as the driver will let us determine). Answer 2010-02-25 Regina: I like using the Message Area too, but propose another string. Situation: I print a DINA5 brochure. OOo prints the correct two document pages together, but uses DINA5 paper size instead of DINA4. Because my printer is able to use DINA5, I get no warning, but a print of 2xDINA5 downscaled to DINA5 printed on DINA4. Unless I open the printer properties, I cannot know which paper size OOo assumes, because the preview looks the same for DINA5 and DINA4. I propose: Assumed size of sheet of paper (height x width) 210 mm x 297 mm = DIN A4 The first line will be translated, the second line uses the units from the page format setting. The part = DIN A4 is added, if it is a named size known to OOo. So the second line needs no translation and positions are therefore independent of local string length.--Regina 20:56, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
2010-02-15	Christoph	Provide watermark functionality	New	Please refer to Issue 22405 and mail thread ux-ui: Easy way to create text watermarks
2010-11-04	Mike	Manual Duplex Printing Capability	New	Mail by Mike: "Printers that don't have physical 2-side printing attachments can do it if the print job is properly ordered. Since the printing system will now (in OO 3.3+) by "pulling" data, it should be trivial to send the pages to the printer in the right order (say, even in reversed order, then odd in normal order). Some printer drivers do that for you, but not in Windows 7 for older printers that have to use a generic driver. Add as a print option?"