[Libreoffice-ux-advise] Advice on adding Smart-Art related settings

[Jan Holesovsky]

Hi Jacobo, Miklos,

Miklos Vajna píše v St 02. 10. 2013 v 14:44 +0200:

> > With the current one, a user can change the shapes
> > but those changes won't be exported back to docx and that's confusing.
> 
> Indeed. Read the original rationale here:
> 
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2013-July/054428.html
> 
> There we agreed that if the objects are modified (search for "mutate"),
> then these invisible properties should be dropped. (That's not the case
> ATM, but it should be this way in the long run.) That way if the user
> edits the shape, it'll be exported as a normal group shape, so the edit
> of the user is not lost.

I support this approach :-)

> > Finally, maybe we should call this option "SmartArt to LibreOffice
> > shapes or reverse", since we are not involving Draw in this process.
> > Besides, Draw exporting is already different: embedded Draw in a
> > document is exported as a .emf file inside the .docx.
> 
> Indeed, "shapes" or "group shape" (actually a SmartArt is imported as a
> group shape) would be a better description than "Draw", you're right.

Just so that this does not lead to confusion - SmartArt being a real
group shape is a relatively recent fix:

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=59373b753902f69cd44d183568b084429322e7ab

In the previous versions it has been broken into individual shapes which
is the worst of all options from my point of view - but having a group
shape that the user has to explicitly ungroup to do his/her
modifications + drop the smartart metadata with this ungroup operation
seems reasonably valid to me (if we have undo for that, that is).

If we want to warn the users, we can use the the InfoBar (search for
AppendInfoBar) so that it is relatively unobtrusive for them...

With this - undoable operation, and the user notified, I don't think we
really need a setting what to do - or do you see any problems with the
above?

All the best,
Kendy