Re: Re: [libreoffice-design] Fields UI rework - first impressions

Hi Cédric, Christoph, all,

sorry for the long delay - but things were a bit messy around here:)

First the good news: LibreOffice is running on my machine and it is running 
well :)

Now to the tough points: All your comments were very helpful - even though I 
think I will still need some time to actually understand and interalize all 
the information. To me it all sums up to the following (which is probably also 
true for most other tasks around):

We need a complete redesign of the dialogue into probably more than one 
dialogue including cutting down the functionallity.

But this definitely is not a task "to easily start with into LibreOffice 
Usability". I actually don't even have a clue how we could achieve this within 
a project of this size - but I am happy to learn :)

So, Cédric, to me it looks like all we can actually do at the moment is the 
following:

Change the dialogue to become wizard. Keep all existing functionallity (no 
questions wether some dialogues still make sense) and adding the missing 
functionality (which also makes this a rather managable task).

In consequence this would mean that users probably cannot alter the type of a 
field after it has once been added to the document other than by deleting it 
and adding a new field.

Are you with me in this short analysis? Any objections from anyone?

I also have some organisational questions: 
I joined the wiki (http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/User:Bjoern). What other 
'channels' should I join? 

Do you prefer any tools for mocking? How do you communicate mocks?

Anything else?

So long for today,
Björn


Am Donnerstag, 23. Dezember 2010, 10:15:38 schrieb Cedric Bosdonnat:
> Hi Chris, Bj�rn (and others),
>
> On Wed, 2010-12-22 at 22:56 +0100, Christoph Noack wrote:
> > > 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 :)
>
> Well, are you installing it from here?
>
> http://software.opensuse.org/search?q=LibreOffice&baseproject=openSUSE%
> 3A11.3&lang=en&exclude_filter=home%3A&exclude_debug=true
>
> It went very well for me (at least on OpenSuse 11.2)
>
> > Hehe, there is ... and although some people won't believe that, some
> > parts are still superior to what the competition provides.
>
> Well there are some important differences with what Word does. Some of
> the most important ones:
>   * Word allows nested fields, LibreOffice doesn't. This is very useful
> to introduce conditional content for Mail Merges for example.
>   * Word has form fields, LibreOffice can handle them, but has no UI to
> insert them.
>   * There are Word fields that LibreOffice can't handle and
> vice-versa... but at least LibreOffice keeps them to be able to save
> them again to doc files.
>
> If you want to have a look at some doc test files to see those form
> fields, there are some samples attached to these bugs:
>   * https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30711
>   * https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=636119
>   * https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=636127
>   * https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=636128
>
> > But there are also other places that deal with field / variable
> >
> > information (to give you an overview):
> >       * the application menu "Insert -- Fields" provides shortcuts
> >       to
> >       
> >         often used field types (static list)
> >       
> >       * the Navigator lists some of the field information (e.g.
> >       provides
> >       
> >         a list of headings in the document)
> >       
> >       * the Data Sources dialog ("View -- Data Sources") provides
> >       direct
> >       
> >         linking of fields of connected databases
>
> The following are also related:
>         * Insert -- Bookmark
>         * Insert -- Cross-reference
>
> > > 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?
> >
> > Well, very good point (Calc)! Although there is also some (limited)
> > formula stuff in Writer as well. For other concepts, mmh, I have to
> > think about that ... I'm currently unsure. Stefan, anyone else?
>
> FYI, the Writer formulas are handled by some Writer specific code.
> Sharing the same code than Calc (and have the same syntax) for them is
> one of my goals. I already have some pending patch in that area using
> ixion (the new formula engine that will be used in calc in the future)
>
> Regards,

-- 
www.OpenSource-Usability-Labs.com

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