[Libreoffice-ux-advise] Hiding/Showing the page breaks in writer

[Olivier R.]

Hello Christoph,

Le 16/09/2011 22:40, Christoph Noack a écrit :

> Okay, let's address this step by step - I think everybody agrees that
> the visualization of page breaks is valuable. I, personally, also use
> the page break information quite heavily.

So am I.

> But, the blue (or whatever colored) line isn't self explaining - so the
> question is whether it helps (advanced users) or worries (less advanced
> users) if it is shown in the Writer WYSIWYG mode - it could even be a
> document border. That was our rationale to switch the visibility of this
> "line" with the non-printing characters, plus adding a "this is a page
> break icon" plus tooltip.
>
> So I currently see two alternatives trying to balance the needs of the
> variety of users ...
>
> Version 1: Back to a (tweaked) former behavior
>        * non-printing characters off -->  show the line (but: use a narrow
>          dashed line to make it look like a markup, like the
>          headers/footers indicator or the Notes connector lines)
>        * non-printing characters on -->  show the line and add the icon
>          for "this is a page break" (which is currently implemented via
>          text, as Cedric stated)
>
> Version 2: Make the border a formatting aid -->  Same behavior as above,
> but make the the line a configurable formatting aid (Tools - Options -
> Writer - Formatting Aids). [BTW: I don't like to add more configuration
> options, but it would fit to the concept we have today...]

Imho, page/column breaks are text boundaries more than special 
characters, so I think it should be visible as well as page/sections 
boundaries, and that’s why I suggested the first solution. But it does 
not really matter if it should be a full page/column line, a dashed line 
or a shortened line (to fit more to WYSIWYG), or something else, as long 
as this information is available WITHOUT displaying non-printable 
characters. That was the main concern on the French ml.
Why? Simply because some of us just never display the non-printable 
characters. So removing all hints of the presence of page/column breaks 
without NP-chars is like removing them totally. Switching all the times 
the displaying mode would be really unconvenient.


> @ Cedric, Olivier: Mmh, currently thinking if (after our changes) the
> former upper document border is still the right place to draw such a
> line, or whether the upper page border would fit even more ... Any
> opinion?

It could be small red arrow in the margin, or two slashes // at the 
corner to suggest that the text flow has been cut.

On the French ml, we suggested to draw page/column breaks at the bottom 
of pages/columns, but it is apparently technically difficult because 
breaks are parameters of the next paragraph. So said Cédric.


Regards,
Olivier R.