Re: FW: Smart-Art in Writer - Correct 'Import' approach ?

Hi Miklos,
See my comments below.
Thanks,
Adam


On Tue, Sep 3, 2013 at 3:21 PM, Miklos Vajna <vmiklos@suse.cz> wrote:

> Hi Adam,
>
> On Sun, Sep 01, 2013 at 05:35:12PM +0300, Adam Fyne <Adam.Fyne@cloudon.com>
> wrote:
> > We are doing some work on implementing 'Smart-Art *Preservation*' in
> Writer.
> > Meaning – if the user does    WordèLOèWord    round-trip we plan that
> they
> > won't lose their Smart-Art object.
> >
> > Currently Smart-Art is being imported into *simple shapes* in Writer
> (which
> > don't exactly look the same), and most of the actual data and binding
> > between shapes is lost (not to mention it doesn't look the same).
> >
> > In order to preserve the original Smart-Art object – we would plan on
> > loading the entire XML nodes and attributes of Smart-Art to property maps
> > (e.g. Miklos's great 'InteropGrabBag').
>
> This makes sense, yes.
>
> > In addition, instead of showing to the user simple shapes (that he can
> > currently edit and move around) –
> >
> > we would like to change this and show the user a *locked* bitmap of the
> > smart-art, that the user cannot manipulate (so that he can at least
> > preserve the original Smart-Art).
>
> What is the benefit of this, from a user's point of view?

Because at this phase, we are not going to add logic to 'manipulate' the
Smart-Art object,
so if a user is allowed to changed the location of the shapes, and then
saves back the file - and opens it in Word -
he won't understand why his 'changes' to the shapes weren't persisted.
That's why we believe it is best to simply not allow any changes, because
they won't be persisted anyway.


> > Should we take a different approach that maybe pops a message when
> loading
> > a DOCX with Smart-Art asking the user:
> >
> > *"We noticed you are importing a DOCX with Smart-Art. Would you like to
> > preserve it and keep it un-editable or convert it to simple shapes ?"*
> >
> > And then act according to the user's choice? (choosing simple shapes will
> > lose the 'Smart-Art' functionality, while choosing 'preserve' will not
> let
> > the user edit the smart-art, only see it).
>
> This is certainly possible, e.g. the ASCII filter asks for encoding
> IIRC, the CSV import filter is also interactive, but one popup for every
> smartart is probably a bit too much, imagine a presentation containing
> 100 smartart shapes. :)
The idea was to show a single pop-up for 'all Smart-Art' objects in the
file - asking
"do you want to convert the Smart-Art in this file to simple shapes (and
lose functionallity) or preserve the original Smart-Art objects ?"


> Miklos



-- 

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*Adam Fyne*

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