[libreoffice-design] Am alternative print range selection algorithm

Hi everybody,

I would like to get some UX input on tdf#89708 - or a different
implementation of the requested feature.

MAILMERGE: Add option to prevent inserting extra blank pages
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89708

The implementation is at: https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/#/c/18420/
tdf#89708 Adjust print page range for unprinted blank pages
by Eilidh McAdam for master [NEW]
(I just fixed the patch for all those renames)

The origin of the patch is a tender of the OSB Alliance (Open Source
Business Alliance e.V.) from 2014. The patch matches "use case 1, part 3":

> In the printer dialog the number of pages to be printed should correspond to the number of 
> generated pages from the mail merge function.

See:
http://osb-alliance.de/fileadmin/Working_Groups/OfficeInteroperability/Project2/SpecificationMajorFeatureImprovements_final.pdf

And just quoting my comment from the bug report:
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89708#c2

> There is no way to prevent the blank pages.
>
> But we already don't display blank pages in the LO print dialog, as you can see in the image (no 
> pages previewed AKA 0/0, because "print empty pages" is not selected).
>
> So the print range selector needs to evaluate the range according to the "print blank pages" 
> setting. This is doable.
>
> Now we get the "problem", that the preview range doesn't match with the displayed page numbers in 
> the document window - not sure which is worse.
>
> All this can become - in any way - frustrating for the user.

The primary source of the problem is the mail merge origin. You have a
single letter document, do a full mail merge and now want to select some
of the generated documents of the dataset for print. You know you want
to print datasets 15 and 18.

So any suggestion how to solve this problem in a consistent way?
Maybe we want a configuration option, which probably also ignores empty
pages in "normal" page count?

Thanks for your input

Jan-Marek

P.S. Cors suggestion (teach the users) also helps, but the actual user
experience is still bad IMHO.
P.P.S the inconsistent different ways to run a mail merge also don't
help improving the experience.

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