[Libreoffice] [PATCH] fdo#31251 - Improve default page layout

[Christoph Noack]

Hi Sébastien, all!

Am Montag, den 18.04.2011, 22:47 +0200 schrieb Sébastien Le Ray:
> Le Sat, 16 Apr 2011 15:08:23 +0200,
> Christoph Noack <christoph at dogmatux.com> a écrit :
[...]
> > Am Samstag, den 16.04.2011, 15:01 +0200 schrieb Sébastien Le Ray:
> > > Le Sat, 16 Apr 2011 14:58:46 +0200,
> > [...]
> > 
> > > > @ Sébastien: Would it be possible that you'll have a look how it
> > > > is implemented. Any chance that we - as Thomas mentioned - get
> > > > this streamlined throughout the applications?
> > > 
> > > Yes I'm gonna check this out… [...]
> > 
> > I don't think so ... last time we discussed that at OOo, the shadow
> > improvements were related to Renaissance. And the Renaissance project
> > explicitly addressed Impress (and Draw, since it is based on the very
> > same code base). So we may have some further benefit with Writer :-)
> 
> I looked at sd code, they've done mostly what I planned to do. As I
> previously said, impress/draw and writer code differs on a design point
> of view so I cannot reuse it as is.

Okay, so the only chance it to let it look similar.

> We've a 4 sided shadow, should I port it Writer as is or are their
> request of improvment? Should I let the color configuration option for
> shadow color and use the value under draw or just drop it?

Not an easy answer, so a step-by-step approach ... easy to tough
questions:
      * Their shadow looks very good (what I could see in my VM) --> It
        would already be an improvement to "copy" it to Writer (just out
        of curiousity: how did they implement them - masks, bitmaps with
        alpha channel, ...)

      * The shadow color configuration might be dropped --> At least if
        we can find a shadow that works well on most backgrounds (e.g.
        finding an appropriate color, or calculating the shadow based on
        the application background color - preferred). That would save
        users a bit effort and help the translation / documentation
        teams as well.

      * Anyway, it would be good to have a bit more control how the
        shadow was created, because we might need matching shadows for
        other objects (e.g. Notes, Panes, ...) --> I think, the
        specification we've started is a good basis, so do you think we
        can continue with that (see my note below, please). I just need
        to know what graphics we can use to realize good effects at the
        document edges (see my last mail).

      * A more attractive document background is still desirable --> can
        we go with a gradient in the next step?

Note: During the weekend, I've started to redo some of the graphics for
the specification page - but I haven't uploaded them yet. At the moment,
some further (independent) thoughts led to a shadow that's very close to
the Impress one.

Sorry for the many questions / comments - but I'd like to understand
more what's needed and how a solution might look like that's comfortable
(so to say) to implement.

As always - thanks in advance :-)

Cheers,
Christoph