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

[Cedric Bosdonnat]

Hi Olivier, Christoph,

On Sat, 2011-09-17 at 14:38 +0200, Christoph Noack wrote:
> > > 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.
> 
> As I said, the line could be kept (either always, or being a formatting
> aid), but needs more explanation (doable if non-printing characters are
> "on"). Concerning the visualization: some good proposals have been made
> by Cedric at the Hackfest ... so I think he is aware how this could be
> done.

So, before answering with a new idea I made a quick test. I have an idea
that could please every body:

  * Draw the manual page break line between the two pages instead of the
top of the paragraph defining the break.
  * Draw it unconditionally. We can surely find a way to disable it in
some way through options, but at that place it would be a problem as
it's not on a page.
  * Try to implement the button on the left of that line instead of the
text over the line as we discussed it at the hackfest. That point still
needs some thinking from me, but now that I managed to do it for the
header/footer separator button it shouldn't be too complex :)

> And, the behavior/visualization you are referring to is clearly the less
> WYSIWYG draft mode we lack since quite some time ...

Yeah... that Draft mode is missing, but I don't have enough time to take
care of it (just check the number of bugs assigned to me... and none
have been fixed when I was working on header/footers feature).

> > > @ 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.
> 
> Mmh, will think about that as well ... but at the moment we need a
> solution that considers Cedric's workload and that works for all of us.
> So, waiting for his opinion on the two alternatives.

So what do you think of the third alternative?

Regards,

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