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

[Cedric Bosdonnat]

Hi Christoph, Cor, Olivier,

On Mon, 2011-09-19 at 21:30 +0200, Christoph Noack wrote:
> Am Montag, den 19.09.2011, 20:21 +0200 schrieb Cor Nouws:
> > Cedric Bosdonnat wrote (19-09-11 10:14)
> > >    * Draw the manual page break line between the two pages instead of the
> > > top of the paragraph defining the break.
> > 
> > Did you try/look at a possible position close to the top of the page, 
> > say 2 px below ?
> > (But I've of course no idea how it looks in your build/mind, so have to 
> > be careful with this question)

Well... 2px below the top of the page wouldn't be good looking, that's
why I though between the two pages.

> This is both a great idea, but sounds funny to my ears ... I have been
> told for years that drawing on the gray background is quite difficult,
> so I should forget about that. If its possible, hey new possibilities!

ATM it works quite nicely apart some missing repaints in some cases that
I'll need to fix. I pushed that new thing to master yesterday as it
can't be worse than what we had before.

BTW I started reusing the dashed line code of the header/footer
separator for the manual breaks.

In that area, I also had to fix the columns text bounds display to avoid
drawing a rectangle around it. I'm not painting smaller inner corners
for the columns... which combines quite nicely with the page bounds
indicators.

> But, I'm aware that this means a lot of work ... but since the basic
> functionality is there, we can relax and it rather seems like adding a
> bit cream on top. Do you think there is anybody on the dev list to help
> us here, maybe getting mentored to revise other stuff as well?

We could ask... but there aren't that many people knowing the writer
painting bits there. the fading shouldn't be too complex to implement...
but it may wait a bit as there are more important things to work on to
finish the whole feature.

> Anyway, some mouse-over effects need to be as well (not an urgent issue,
> but its good manners for a UI to have something like that).

Sure.

> Finally, still thinking about your and Oliver's proposal ... the
> combination of all our thoughts would lead to quite some added value.
> Unfortunately, I miss the time (at the very moment) to draw something
> like that for a discussion. If anybody jumps in ... great :-)

ATM, I implemented the proposition I made yesterday (minus the page
break button).

> [1] Currently, the long delay helps to not bother users, but they might
> not be able to "connect the dots" that hovering over the header/footer
> is the reason for letting the tab appear. So, here an example how that
> might work if the user just hovers (not clicks):

I recently changed the delay to 1 second in (and out). There were some
troubles also with the mouse move events that were fixed last friday (so
probably not in your build).

The separator is hidden when the user clicks somewhere outside the area
or types something: this makes the whole thing more natural to me.

>       * If the user hovers the header, then the header/footer indicator
>         appears after 0,5 seconds (100% to 60% transparency in another
>         0,5s). --> indicator shown quickly, but unobtrusively
>       * As long as the mouse pointer hovers the header/footer indicator,
>         then switch to 0% transparency. --> mouse over effect, shows the
>         "active" element

Why not, that's another timer's work but not that complex.

>       * If the user "leaves" the "just hovered" header/footer (section
>         or indicator), then fade out the indicators in 1 second. -->
>         looks good

The fading when going out shouldn't be so simple... as we need to have a
timer to give the user some time to move the mouse from the area to the
button to click it.

I still have some painting problems to fix and I hope to be able to move
the dashed line with the separator control.

Thanks for your reactions and tests,

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