Re: [Libreoffice-ux-advise] Advice on adding Smart-Art related settings

Hi Miklos,

On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 2:44 PM, Miklos Vajna <vmiklos@collabora.co.uk>wrote:

> Hi Jacobo,
>
> On Wed, Oct 02, 2013 at 11:30:31AM +0200, Jacobo Aragunde Pérez <
> jaragunde@igalia.com> wrote:
> > In my opinion, the default behaviour should be SmartArt becoming
> > immutable on import.
>
> That would be a regression, I'm afraid, since by default ATM you can do
> that.

Maybe you can, but it's not clear that the SmartArt has been converted to
simple shapes, so the user can easily accidentally lose his data, and we
certainly don't want that.
The ideal solution would be to have a "Convert to Shapes" button in a
contextual toolbar, as mentioned earlier. That's the way e.g. Inkscape
deals with converting text to a path; it makes it clearer that some data is
lost. Is that really that much more complicated over adding an option?

> > With the current one, a user can change the shapes
> > but those changes won't be exported back to docx and that's confusing.
>
> Indeed. Read the original rationale here:
>
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2013-July/054428.html

There doesn't seem to be much in the way of rationale there.
I could only find "need to discard the foreign properties on a object when
it is mutated; or work harder to determine what to do (Michael)". Am I
looking in the wrong place?

> There we agreed that if the objects are modified (search for "mutate"),
> then these invisible properties should be dropped. (That's not the case
> ATM, but it should be this way in the long run.) That way if the user
> edits the shape, it'll be exported as a normal group shape, so the edit
> of the user is not lost.

But the original SmartArt object is lost without indication.
It needs to be clear to the user that he's losing data by editing the shape.

> > Finally, maybe we should call this option "SmartArt to LibreOffice
> > shapes or reverse", since we are not involving Draw in this process.
> > Besides, Draw exporting is already different: embedded Draw in a
> > document is exported as a .emf file inside the .docx.
>
> Indeed, "shapes" or "group shape" (actually a SmartArt is imported as a
> group shape) would be a better description than "Draw", you're right.
>
> Miklos
>
> _______________________________________________
> Libreoffice-ux-advise mailing list
> Libreoffice-ux-advise@lists.freedesktop.org
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice-ux-advise