Re: [libreoffice-design] Some question concerning the 'fields' dialogue in writer

Hi Björn,

sorry for the delay, since the FOSDEM (preparation and - still -
postoration *g*) keeps me a bit busy.

Am Donnerstag, den 03.02.2011, 16:25 +0100 schrieb Björn Balazs:
> Hi all,
>
> Together with Paolo I am fighting my way through the 'fields' dialogue in 
> writer in order to find a more usable solution for it.

Cool, thanks!

> While we make good progress and hope to have understood most of the dialogue 
> some questions remain - perhaps you can help?

My proposal would be to ask on the user mailing list as well, since the
guys who support there, have a deep understanding concerning the use
cases. At least, that's what I perceived on the German mailing lists in
the past.

> - How is the 'database' tab supposed to work? (and would you suggest to fit it 
> into the structure?)

Hhm, did you have a look at the help - the descriptions are usually not
that bad. 

The right side of the dialog seems to be a duplication of the "Data
Source Explorer" that can be enabled via View -- Data Sources. Please
search for the string (Data Source Explorer) in the help and you'll find
some more explanation. In short: Databases are abstracted elements (data
sources) that are available within LibO.

> - How does the 'DDE Field' dialogue work? (and is it still needed? - I read 
> something about outdated technology)

Maybe having a look at the bottom of the help page "DDE;command for
inserting sections" might help ... and outdated, I don't know, since
many of our users work in heterogeneous environments. But here, really,
I don't know. 

> - Do you agree with removing 'Execute Macros' and 'Combine Characters' from 
> the dialogue? (As they are no fields and do not belong here)

Concerning Execute Macros ... why isn't that a field? Okay, it rather
works like a form control, but it's embedded into the text. The field
(or let's say "tag"/"command") tells Writer to execute a macro when the
user clicks on it.

Where do you think does it belong to ... some kind of actions links,
something separate. Personally, I'm unsure (really).

Concerning the Combine Characters, here we should rely on the help of
some Asien guys, since it seems for them (although the functionality
itself seems to work very similar to a Math object, character based
anchor).

> - Do you have any good reasons why 'Input field' is needed and shouldn't be 
> substituted by the corresponding 'variable', resp. 'user field' dialogue?

Input fields can be changed from within the document - in comparison
with the variables set via the fields dialog.

User fields are (as far as I know) global variables, whereas variables
are local ones - can be overwritten according to the textflow of the
document. But I'm not sure ...

> - Do you have any suggestions for improvements of the supposed structure?

Working offline now (sitting in the train), I don't have access, sorry!

> You can find the current state of work on my wiki page [1] and you are invited 
> to use it as a wiki too.

Mmmh, wouldn't it be helpful to move the content to an "official"
activity page (see the Design Team wiki page, Work_Items) - that might
be a bit more impressing to others ;-)))

> All wording is provisional. Structure is not. Send me a personal mail if you 
> want to work on the original mindmapping file (created with freemind [2]). I 
> am not allowed to upload the file (.mm) to the wiki :(

Oh, you can ZIP this file and upload it - workaround, but (as the name
suggests) it works :-)

Some time ago, I had also a look whether there are any mindmap
extensions for MediaWiki, but there doesn't seem to be that much. Has
anybody experience with that? Would be great to directly work on such
mindmaps in the wiki. At least, a Freemind extension for displaying such
mindmaps exists, as far as I know.

> Looking forward to your comments!

(Not so) Prompt Delivery ;-)

> Cheers,
> Björn

By the way, is Freemind already listed on our tools page?

Cheers,
Christoph


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