Version 4.1 Draw Guide

Hello

Version 4.1 of the Preface, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of the Draw Guide are
now in the Drafts LO4.1 folder ready for review and comment.

http://www.odfauthors.org/libreoffice/english/draw-guide/draft-lo4.1

I used the files from Version 4.0 that were published by Jean a couple of
days ago. Only very minor changes have been carried out to bring these
chapters up to Version 4.1 The file names have also been changed to reflect
Version 4.1.

Regards

PeterS

Hello

Version 4.1 of the Draw Guide Chapter 3 Working with Objects and Object
Points is now in the Drafts LO4.1 folder on the ODF Authors website ready
for review and comment.

http://www.odfauthors.org/libreoffice/english/draw-guide/draft-lo4.1/dg-ch-03-working-with-objects-and-object-points/view

Regards

PeterS

Draw Guide v4.1 Preface and Chapters 1, 2, 3 have been published. I made trivial changes to all but Ch3, in which I did a bit more copyediting. Thanks for the good work, Peter.

--Jean

Hello

Version 4.1 of the Draw Guide Chapter 4 Changing Object Attributes is the
the Drafts LO4.1 folder on the ODF Authors website ready for review and
comment.

http://www.odfauthors.org/libreoffice/english/draw-guide/draft-lo4.1/dg-ch04-changing-object-attributes/view

Enjoy

PeterS

Hello

Version 4.1 of the Draw Guide Chapter 6 Editing Pictures is now in the
Drafts LO4.1 folder on the ODF Authors website ready for review and comment.

http://www.odfauthors.org/libreoffice/english/draw-guide/draft-lo4.1/dg-ch06-editing-pictures/view

Regards

PeterS

Version 4.1 of the Draw Guide Chapter 7 Working with 3D Objects is now in the
Drafts LO4.1 folder on the ODF Authors website ready for review and
comments.

http://www.odfauthors.org/libreoffice/english/draw-guide/draft-lo4.1/dg-ch-07-working-with-3d-objects/view

Regards

PeterS

Hi Peter,

I belong to the authors of this part in the German version www.openoffice.org/de/doc/oooauthors/ooo-draw-handbuch.pdf‎

I now see, that all my efforts to distinguish between the so called "custom shapes" and the classical (from OOo1) primitive shapes are lost and that there is a large confusion in the descriptions and figures.

Only "custom shapes" can use "Extrusion on/off". The objects of the Fontwork gallery are "custom shapes" too. Custom shapes remain custom shapes even when extruded to 3D. This kind of extrusion is a special state of a custom shapes. Therefore you can turn extrusion on and off.

Only classical primitive shapes can be turned into true 3D Scenes. Such a 3D Scene and the 3D objects in it are different kind of objects. There is no way back to the generating 2D shape.

Extruded custom shapes and true 3D objects have different tools and are stored different in file format. It is no good idea to mix them up in the guide.

The icon has the label "Extrusion on/off" but the icon "To 3D" does also "extrude". Therefore the word "extrusion" is not suitable to distinguish between them.

Do you understand German, so that you can read the German "Draw-Handbuch"?

Kind regards
Regina

PeeWee schrieb:

Hello Regina

My German is very limited - no problem in German bars and restaurants and paying there bill. I did spend two years in Hamburg and learnt some German from the people I became friends with. However that was a long time ago.

You have made 3D objects a little clearer with your explanation. What puzzles me is why is there such a complication with 3D objects? Once a 2D object is extruded into 3D then you should be able to use all the tools that are available for the ready made 3D objects. This complication makes it a difficult thing to get across simple enough for a novice user to understand, so your help will be appreciated.

Send me the German version to my email address. I will run it through a machine translation where I do not understand. A translation is never perfect and I am used to sorting out translations into English from my time with Oki when I worked with all the European languages.

With regards

Peter Schofield
psauthor@libreoffice.org

Hello Regina again

The link in your email does not work.

Peter Schofield
psauthor@libreoffice.org

Hi Peter,

Hello Regina again

The link in your email does not work.

I didn't follow the thread but maybe here you can find what you search for:
http://www.odfauthors.org/libreoffice/deutsch/arbeitsordner/Archiv_alte_OOo_Dokumente/draw

Hi Peter,

PeeWee schrieb:

Hello Regina

My German is very limited - no problem in German bars and restaurants
and paying there bill. I did spend two years in Hamburg and learnt
some German from the people I became friends with. However that was a
long time ago.

I still struggling with English. My written English is often strange and it is difficult for me to understand spoken English.

You have made 3D objects a little clearer with your explanation. What
puzzles me is why is there such a complication with 3D objects?

Let's go back in history. In StarOffice and in the sequel in OOo1 only some kind of shapes exists. The status bar shows in the left field, which kind of object it is. For example, you will see "Rectangle selected" or "Callout selected" or "Parallelogram selected" or "Bézier curve selected" ...
This draw objects can be turned to 3D objects. The methods are rotation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_of_revolution) and extrusion (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrusion_(Geometrie); I find no English one).
There exists a 3D engine with a lot of features, but the UI is confusing and bad designed, not changed since StarOffice times. The UI is in great want of refresh and redesign.

These classical draw objects were not able to store the features of the "Autoforms" of Microsoft Office. Therefore a new kind of shapes were implemented in OOo2, the so called custom shapes. They got the ability to contain informations, how they should be rendered as 3D-extrusion-object. And they got a new UI for setting this properties. For all the different custom shapes you get only the one string "shape selected" in the status bar. At the same time the "Fontwork gallery" was introduced. From a technical view, that are custom shapes as well.

  Once

a 2D object is extruded into 3D then you should be able to use all
the tools that are available for the ready made 3D objects.

The ready made 3D objects are not only simple 3D objects, but they are 3D scenes. You cannot have such 3D object without a root 3D scene. Such 3D scene cannot include custom shapes. There is no way to write such thing into the file format. And there exists no requests to change the spec in this direction. If you convert a custom shape by the tools "To 3D" or "To 3D rotation object" they are converted to a polygon or to a curve first, but the user is not notified about that. Therefore the 3D dialog is not suitable for custom shapes.

To get a deeper understanding of this very different kind of objects, it might be worth reading the spec, section 10.5 "3D Shapes" and 10.6 "Custom Shape". [http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/os/OpenDocument-v1.2-os-part1.html]

  This

complication makes it a difficult thing to get across simple enough
for a novice user to understand, so your help will be appreciated.

I agree, that is a challenge. In contrast to the old German version, I now would make two strictly independent sections, one for "3D Shapes" and a new section covering all the properties and handlings of "Custom Shapes". There exists not only their special way of extruding, but also the yellow handles to vary the shapes, and they differ in the way text is used. You can even write your own custom shapes, but sadly their is no UI for that, but you have to write into the file directly. I had a talk about it last FOSDEM.

The current drawing toolbar in LO makes it more complicate. OOo had the classical rectangle and ellipse in the toolbar, and you could turn them into 3D shapes. But the current drawing toolbar has dropped them, and instead has included the custom shapes "Rectangle" and "Ellipse" which are already in the drop-down list "Basic shapes" of the custom shapes. To use the classical shapes, you have to customize the toolbar first. The consequence of which is, that users do not get the properties they are used to, rounded corners for example.

If you have questions about the shapes, please ask. I do not have time enough to write a full text, but will comment on single problems.

Kind regards
Regina

Hello Regina (again you say;-)))

Your explanation has helped tremendously. I shall now create two separate sections for Chap 7 Working with 3D Objects.

With regards

Peter Schofield
psauthor@libreoffice.org

Hello

I have withdrawn Version 4.1 Chapter 7. Due to information from one of our
German colleagues (Regina), this chapter needs alteration to distinguish the
two main types of 3D objects that are available. At the moment, the present
chapter does not explain it clearly enough.

Regards

PeterS

Hi Peter,

I have put a version with further comments into the Feedback folder.

Kind regards
Regina

PeeWee schrieb:

Hello

Version 4.1 of the Chapter 7 Working with 3D Objects as now available on the
ODF Authors website ready for review and comments. It has been rewritten to
incorporate the comments and suggestions from Regina.

http://www.odfauthors.org/libreoffice/english/draw-guide/draft-lo4.1/dg-ch-07-working-with-3d-objects/view

I have been a little quiet lately, but other matters have been tackling
precedence on my time. I am slowly building back up to having time for LO
duties.

With regards

PeterS

Hello

Version 4.1 of the Draw Guide Chapter 8 Connections, Flowcharts and
Organization Charts is now available in the Drafts LO4.1 folder on the ODF
Authors website ready for review and comment.

http://www.odfauthors.org/libreoffice/english/draw-guide/draft-lo4.1/dg-ch-08-connections-flowcharts-and-organization-charts/view

Regards

PeterS

Chapters 7 and 8 of the Draw Guide v4.1 have been published after
minor editing by me. As always, they are available for further review
by others.

--Jean

Hello

I recently joined the LibreOffice documentation mailing list and decided to begin my contribution by updating Chapter 9 of the Draw guide (Adding And Formatting Text) to version 4.1. It has now been uploaded to the ODF Authors website for review and comments.

http://www.odfauthors.org/libreoffice/english/draw-guide/draft-lo4.1/chapter-9-adding-and-formatting-text/view

Whilst there was not a great deal that needed to be updated, there is one screen shot that will need replacing. The Special Characters dialogue box (Figure 8, on page 9) in the version I am using (LibreOffice 4.1.3.2 on Windows 8.1) is re-organised, with clickable action boxes now found at the bottom of window, along with a new 'Delete Last' box added.

I recall reading in the instructional documentation that screen shots from Mac or Linux operating systems are preferable to those from Windows. As such, I hope that someone will be able to update the screen shot on my behalf.

I also wonder whether the slightly different placement of tabs in the Graphic Styles dialogue box (Figure 10, on page 12) would necessitate replacement of the screen shot. The 'Text' and 'Text Animation' tabs are on the second row in the version I am using but this seems a minor detail.

Regards,

Martin

Hello Martin

We are at cross purposes here. I am updating the Draw Guide to Version 4.1 which means two of us were working on the same chapter. I shall now use your version to complete Chapter 9 and reissue onto the ODF Authors website. This will mean that Chapter 10 & 11 will follow very quickly.

With regards

Peter Schofield
psauthor@libreoffice.org

Hello Peter

I'm terribly sorry; I should have checked before I started.

I've just taken another look at the publications page (https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications) and would like advice as to which area I can begin work on. Is the objective to bring all guides up to date (4.1.x branch) or are 4.0.x guides sufficient?

Thanks,

Martin