[Libreoffice-ux-advise] Header and Footers separators design

[Cedric Bosdonnat]

Hi Cor, Christoph,

On Thu, 2011-07-07 at 00:15 +0200, Cor Nouws wrote:
> Christoph Noack wrote (06-07-11 23:10)
> > So, do we talk about:
> >        * when editing headers/footers, then a new visualization shows
> 
> Yes
> 
> >          what's getting edited:
> >                * new line and "Header: $PAGE_STYLE" are shown
> 
> Yes
> 
> >                * the remaining document parts are grayed out (a bit)
> 
> Yes
> 
> >        * editing headers/footers starts via "double click" on the desired
> >          area
> 
> Yes
> 
> >        * during "normal" document editing, access to the headers/footers
> >          is not possible
> 
> Yes - and those are a bit grey too

So only thing that aren't mentioned here are some bugs that are still to
be fixed:
  * Some borders / lines aren't greyed out ATM. I need to hack the way
these are drawn to fix it.
  * When scrolling down in the document, if you stay too long on a
header / footer it gets it as a double click and turns to edit mode.
  * When opening a document, there are some troubles with the cursor
location and viewed area... though that may not have been introduced by
that hack.

One of the points to note for the feature is that I added a "Edit /
Headers / Footers" menu to switch the edit mode.

> > If this is correct, then a "-1" from my side to the whole package. I'd
> > like to understand more about the issues we currently run into (e.g.
> 
> Issues we run into with the changes or with the current behaviour?
> a.  with the current behaviour.
> Not so many. Only since headers/footers are easily accessible, there is 
> some change that they get changed by accident.
> And the difference between main text and headers/footers is not that 
> big. Especially when people turn of text borders (menu View), cause they 
> do not know those from Word (where they are turned of by default).

The biggest problem I encountered there that really motivated the
feature is that when you have a background picture anchored in the
header / footer that goes behind the main body text, you almost always
select that picture if you click on blank areas of paragraphs, table
cells and so on.

With that feature it's no longer possible as the picture is anchored in
the header / footer and you are editing the main body... it can't be
selected.

> b. with the changes: see the other mail. No real that I have found so far.

Jbfaure reported me quite some crashes / usability issues that were
fixed in between.

> > whether the preconditions - partly very different from MSO interaction
> > design - support/enable such a change). One tiny example are the current
> > gray separator lines - being shown all the time,
> 
> As written, that depends.
> 
> > although the content
> > itself is only editable via a (hidden) double-click. Furthermore, do we
> > run into accessibility problems? ...
> 
> Ctrl-PgUp/PgDwn still work.

I wasn't aware of those shortcuts... and I'll need to trigger the mode
change on those. When hitting Ctrl-PgUp/PgDown the cursor moves to the
header footer but it doesn't switch to the header / footer edition mode.

> > Sorry for lacking proper understanding at the moment ... and maybe
> > delaying things. But I did not get the idea of the change in the mail
> > yesterday. But, I'll promise to help to make this a cool feature :-)

Indeed, making it a really cool feature would be awesome!

-- 
Cédric Bosdonnat
LibreOffice hacker
http://documentfoundation.org
OOo Eclipse Integration developer
http://cedric.bosdonnat.free.fr