[libreoffice-design] Fields UI rework - first impressions

Hi Cederic, all,

I am still fighting some problems with actually installing LibreOffice to my 
OpenSuse (just recently switched because I was pissed with Kubuntu - but world 
is not much greener here - even though the Logo suggests so). No! Don't laugh! 
Stop! I am psychologist :)

What I actually wanted to say is: I was only able to look at the dialogue in 
OO.o - hope the dialogue is still the same (no actually I hope it has changed, 
but expect it to still be the same).

My first impression (only rarely touched it in productive work so far): What a 
monster. No wonder I tried to avoid using it. In other words: There is 
potential. 

Taking a first deeper look, I ended up understanding only parts of the 
dialogue. I have no clue, what users do with variables in here, also the 
functions are quite mysterious atm, and there is a good chance I don't 
overlook the potential of database work. Cross-references seem still to have a 
couple of conceptual leaks to me (why can I set a reference but no Bookmark? 
Whats the difference between both anyhow?). But, hey - it's a start.

The reason for this being one dialogue seems to me that it handles the 
technical comcept "fields". I actually very much doubt "fields" is a valid 
user concept at all, because "insert name of document here" is definetly not 
in the same category as "paint this field red, when datafield equals 5 and 
current pagenumber is greater than 30" - even though both touch the technical 
area of "fields". 

Next to this there a couple of smaller hurdles in the dialogue (e.g. look out 
for the creative variations in the use of "fixed" for a field).

So how do we get on here? We should try work out relevant user-stories that 
are supposed to be covered by this dialogue. Let me start with the ones I 
understand so far and hope we can fill in what I am missing in the scope of a 
discussion:

### Linking
- User wants to link to some other relevant place in the document. so clicking 
brings the clicker to that relevant place - used either for working issues, or 
for presentation issues.
- User wants to mark a place in the document as relevant (we dont't need to do 
that here, do we?)

### Dynamic content
- User wants to show dynamic content (e.g. Chapters, Authors, Pagenumbers, 
Versions, Database-Entries, etc.).

### Dynamic actions
- User wants the document to react automaticallly to special kinds of content 
(What can happen here?).

What else? 
(we can be more specific - but should stay as low-level as possible for the 
moment)

My first impulse is to move the dialogue in the direction of a wizard. So we 
are much more flexible to react to the different needs of the various actions 
in the dialogue. It could also be a potential to split it up into more single-
goal focussed dialogues. Let us see what the discussion about user-stories for 
this dialogue brings up.

I guess from the UX perspective there could conceptually be an overlap with 
the formular editor in calc? Are there any concepts around that could inspire 
our work in this direction? Christoph?

Looking forward to your comments.

Best,
Björn

P.S. Cederic: if there should be any german comments in the relevant source 
code left, I could help you by translating them to english.

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www.OpenSource-Usability-Labs.com

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