[Libreoffice-ux-advise] embedding palettes etc. ...

[Christoph Noack]

Hi Michael,

just a quick answer (mmh, comment), since I currently try to use the
evenings to dig into the bug report stuff ...

Am Montag, den 12.09.2011, 11:35 +0200 schrieb Michael Meeks:
> Hi guys,
> 
> 	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 ].

Very cool!

> 	I just pushed a change adding a check-box to allow the user to
> configure this embedding to master (cf. attached screenshot "[X]
> Embed").

That brings up the question how many palettes (other objects) could be
embedded. The checkbox seems to say "one".

Just being curious: What happens if the user has a different palette on
the system having a different set of colors?


> 	Of course, when you start to look at the 'Area' dialog - you begin to
> wonder why this is the place used to configure the choice of palette
> (and all these other attributes) in random tabs for the document - and
> not for the specific area you selected. That seems rather non-intuitive
> to me :-)
> 
> 	In an ideal world, we'd have some (easy to implement) central place for
> embedding things into the document: perhaps File->Properties or some
> equivalent that would show you:
> 
> 	* embedded palette, fill bitmap, hatch, line-dash etc.
> 	* embedded media files [ I'll try to dig into this next ;-]
> 	* embedded gallery [ also a wish-list ]
> 	* embedded related data files [ deep-future wish-list ]

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 ...

... although there is some relationship with "Links" in the Edit menu.
Resolving links magically "moves" the graphic files into the file.

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).


> 	And some nice linking mechanism 'configure palette' or whatever that
> would take the user there from the 'Area' dialog (?) 

Could be part of the colors work we've started (and postponed) a few
weeks ago.

> 	Anyhow - testing / thoughts / ideas appreciated. There are still some
> slightly rough corners in the interactions there, palettes think they
> are modified when they are not first time but ...
> 
> 	Hopefully it'll be in the next tinderbox build to play with, and I plan
> to extend it to all these tabs (for now).

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?

(Thinking. Maybe Astron, or others have a nice idea?)

Cheers,
Christoph