[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Libreoffice] Fwd: [PATCH] Bug 39167

[Christoph Noack]

Hi Gerald, Kohei, Jenei ... all :-)

Disclaimer: My hybrid PDF stuff in LibO seems a bit broken, so some
things can't be tested ... please point out things that work already.

Am Freitag, den 05.08.2011, 15:22 -0400 schrieb Kohei Yoshida:
[...]
> I'll leave the specific enhancement request discussion to the UX folks,
> but let me address several of your expectations below.

Okay, here are some initial thoughts - but first a short summary how I
understand Gerald's request:
      * Hybrid PDFs are an important feature to him (option should be
        moved to the top)
      * The naming "hybrid" does not provide too much clues to the user
        (caption change proposed)
      * Identifying hybrid PDFs is close to impossible, because OS don't
        support that properly (file type name)
      * Opening hybrid PDFs for editing (again) is harder than necessary
        (recent files list)

Correct?

> On Fri, 2011-08-05 at 16:59 +0200, Gerald Leppert wrote:
[...]
> 
> > Improvements to hybrid PDF: As mentioned in the bug 39168, the hybrid 
> > PDF feature is one of the killer features in LibreOffice. However, its 
> > implementation has some practical and usability problems out of those 
> > most had been already raised in the OpenOffice.org bugzilla. However, 
> > most of them can be easily improved in terms of usability and handling. 
> > This was my intention of the three enhancement requests made to hybrid 
> > PDFs (bug 39167, bug 39168, bug 39169) and I was glad that Gabor liked 
> > the idea and took the initiative to start working on two of these easy 
> > hacks.

Lets try to get a better overview - here are some initial thoughts: 
      * The name "Hybrid PDF" is indeed a bit technical. A different
        short name (e.g. "Combined PDF/ODF" or "Embed ODF source file")
        and revised description (advanced help) are indeed helpful -->
        but: for the dialog caption, please respect the text width
        required for translation 
      * I don't know if hybrid PDFs are "one of the killer features",
        because ... 
              * Portability: Conforming to standards like PDF/A-1a seems
                more important (in terms of arranging the options) 
              * Size issue: PDFs are today used to deliver documents to
                mobile users (plain PDFs are still important) 
              * Feature Set: Using hybrid PDFs removes the "export page
                range" feature 
      * The current hybrid option requires the PDF import extension -
        being optional (although being shipped on e.g. Windows) makes it
        a less important option 
      * There is a major difference for the user between "exporting
        documents" (editing in LibO causes major loss in fidelity / is
        impossible) and "saving files" (runs smoothly) --> your
        proposals would require LibreOffice to treat hybrid PDFs similar
        to native file formats 
              * Opening of a (non-hybrid/hybrid) PDF should be possible
                in any application. If it is a non-hybrid PDF, then
                inform the user that it gets imported in Draw; if its a
                hybrid PDF, then simply open it 
              * Re-opening a hybrid PDF and saving it again should
                create an updated version of the hybrid PDF 
              * If possible: if a hybrid PDF gets saved, then inform the
                user about the consequences (might look like a normal
                PDF, size, ...) 
              * Side note: for the hints, the non-modal information bars
                would again be helpful 
      * I share the concerns stated by the others with regard to the
        ".od?.pdf" file extension - especially since most people might
        still not know what the "od?" stands for. I'm unsure about the
        real impact. An alternative may be to change the given file name
        to something like "-embeddedODF.pdf". Users might then consider
        to change that manually ...

A last question from my side: What happens if e.g. a hybrid PDF gets
opened in Adobe Acrobat and saved again. Is the ODF preserved, even if
the PDF got changed (e.g. comments added, pages removed, ...). If yes,
then it makes things a bit more difficult (according to user
expectations).

Well, I hope some statements are helpful to continue the discussion and
to get some feedback on the feasibility of the proposed changes
(especially the "treat it like a native file format").

Cheers,
Christoph