Hi guys,
First - thank you for your feedback, most helpful. Secondly,
sorry for the slow response - this whole code area is quite a serious
mess of vile cut/paste coding (amongst other things).
So, here are some responses:
On Wed, 2011-09-14 at 22:11 +0200, Regina Henschel wrote:
I've recently been working on enabling embedding palettes / bitmaps /
gradients / etc. into ODF documents - and I've implemented import/export
for all of that [ only for impress currently ].
Why only in impress?
Well currently it is only impress+draw that allows saving
these settings anyway :-) that is a bug IMHO, and I'd love to fix it -
hopefully having re-factored the load/save code for this - it should
be easy to implement for all components.
I just pushed a change adding a check-box to allow the user to
configure this embedding to master (cf. attached screenshot "[X]
Embed").
Will the user find the new feature?
Probably not :-) but then - would they find it anyway ?
How does the user get the name of the embedded palette?
It is unclear that a palette having a 'name' is a useful
concept, that is there in the code (interestingly) but I don't see it
in the UI. Of course, we have lots of (un-translated) names for colors
in the code, and in the palette but ... this is a different issue.
Is the palette embedded in document templates too?
Certainly - any ODF serialization from impress.
Can the palette be transfered from one document to another?
As you load and save the document it is transferred, otherwise
you need to save and re-load it in the other doc using the unpleasant
load/save buttons in each of those tabs :-)
I like to see the dialogs for changing/loading/saving palettes
completely separated from the property dialog of a single object.
Agreed.
* embedded palette, fill bitmap, hatch, line-dash etc.
..
Having another information tab in the properties is OK for me.
Seamonkey has such an information dialog for HTML-pages and I
like it there.
Fine.
Embedding color or line palettes will not increase the file
size too much, but embedding a bitmap palette will increase
the file size quickly with some MB
That depends how large the palette is - the default one
is 152k, and presumably people won't want dozens of bitmaps to
fill areas with (at least, I hope not).
So the question is, what default has the checkbox.
The default would be to off; this is primarily a tool for
corporate template construction where they want to restrict the
palette people choose.
On Tue, 2011-09-13 at 21:54 +0200, Christoph Noack wrote:
That brings up the question how many palettes (other objects)
could be embedded. The checkbox seems to say "one".
Right, so far the code has a simple list of colors, and doing
more is some work that I'd prefer to spend elsewhere :-) Indeed - it
seems (at first sniff) that the 'document theming' idea is done by
just having a well-known set of color names and using those uniformly
in templates - so potentially theming is possible if we get this
right.
Just being curious: What happens if the user has a different palette
on the system having a different set of colors?
No problem, the colors of shapes are stored as real 'colors',
not as indexes into a palette (currently), so nothing particularly bad
happens - they would get the colors to choose from embedded in the
file, or from the system depending on that setting.
Sure, but here each solution will sub-optimal, since we miss an easy
way to separate "document" and "meta data". One thing that's really
cool in Office 2010 is the backstage view doing that nicely ... at
the moment, the File Properties dialog seems to fit best ...
Great - this seems to be the consensus.
... although there is some relationship with "Links" in the Edit
menu. Resolving links magically "moves" the graphic files into the
file.
Oh - hmm, interesting. Of course, by default (these days) we
try to ensure that the default is to embed all the content that is
pasted / inserted into documents: since the alternative is just too
awful: of missing / lost data.
Indeed - perhaps because of this - I can't seem to make
Edit->Links sensitive and/or useful - and it's function seems broken
to me. Should / could we remove that and/or whack it into the File ->
Properties dialog ?
Maybe we should think about some kind of Object Inspector which would be
helpful here, and would also be helpful for all kind of objects (even
text formatting, if people try to understand strange behavior).
Urk - sounds a bit advanced ;-) I'm just working towards
people being able to embed themes nice & easily ;-)
Could be part of the colors work we've started (and postponed) a few
weeks ago
I missed that, pointers appreciated.
Okay, could you please (if there is no quick solution) rename the
checkbox to "Embed into document" (or something like that) and move it
to the lower right?
Can do, will take more vertical space, and some calculation (I
hate VCL's layout) but do-able.
On Wed, 2011-09-14 at 21:49 +0200, Astron wrote:
Before making a suggestion, her are three questions:
1. What's the file size penalty for embedded palettes ?
For palettes - almost nothing - perhaps 5k, clearly there are
lines, hatching etc.
2. Are there possible privacy concerns when embedding, e.g., patterns?
Of course, you can encode whatever you like in whatever you like.
3. Does your addition embed the entire palette or does it make a diff
against the default palette?
The entire palette.
If the answers go something like "typically 2 KB or less (depending on
what the user adds)," "not really" and "a diff," then this would be my
suggestion: embed it and don't add anything to the UI.
Hmm - so I think a 'diff' for the case where people want to
replace the palette and enforce their set of colors (the use-case of
my corporate PR team) is likely to cause grief.
We should aim for maximum document fidelity and if a document has the
wrong colours on a different LibO installation, that doesn't really
help.
Oh ! so, this is not the colors in the document, it is only
the choice of colors that the user is presented with to choose
from. Now - of course, when we come to theming the answers may change,
and we'll need to embed any referenced colors unconditionally (as you
say).
* embedded media files [ I'll try to dig into this next ;-]
Shouldn't that work already? (The last time I tried there was a bug
where video clips would only play if they weren't embedded into the
document, nevertheless you could embed them.)
What does the UI look like for that, at least I couldn't see
how to do this.
As a makeshift measure, maybe you could add a checkbox ("Embed
palette into current document") to "Options > LibreOffice > Colors."
The problem with that is that this is as Christoph says:
On Sat, 2011-09-24 at 16:05 +0200, Christoph Noack wrote:
* Options > LibreOffice > Colors doesn't allow loading / saving of
palettes, so embedding it from here might make less sense.
* This options page is only available for colors - Michael talked
about gradients / hatches / ...
..
Still, no easy solution, only:
* extending the Document Preferences dialog
* extending the Edit - Links... dialog
* create something new
So - thanks for the input.
For now, I'm just going to follow the consensus of:
+ rename the setting "Embed into document"
And, noting the consensus for a future direction of:
+ File properties - the best place for this stuff ...
+ add the "Resolve Links" functionality there
I'd like to drop "Resolve Links" from the Edit menu as/when
that is done.
How does that sound ?
Thanks,
Michael.
--
michael.meeks@suse.com <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot
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