Specification of a Dialog Sorting Component

Base, Calc

Task ID(s)

110234, 100799

Category	Specification Affects

<Other>

Abstract

The handling of the sorting Dialog should be similar in all applications. This specification therefor refers to the sorting dialog in Calc (menu “Data”/”Sort...”) and the sorting dialogs in the wizards such as the report wizard and the query wizard that is planned to be implemented for the Q version. As MS interoperability is a major aspect the capabilities of the sorting dialog in MS Access report wizard influenced this specification too.

i-Team

Specification Owner	Berend Cornelius	Berend.Cornelius@sun.com
Marketing Contact		Susan.Jefferies@Sun.COM
User Experience Contact	Christian Jansen	Christian.Jansen@Sun.COM
Development Contact	Frank Schoenheit	Frank.schoenheit@sun.com
Quality Assurance Contact	Marc Neumann	Marc.schwanz@sun.com
Documentation Contact	Uwe Fischer	Uwe.Fischer@Sun.COM

Specification Reviews

Version	Reviewer	Comment
Reviewed by UX 08/18/03	Christian Jansen	Please find my comment in the notes section
preliminary UI String Review 03/12/04	Elizabeth Matthis	STRG rev done because of Query wiz spec strg review.
Reviewed by QA <Date>		
Reviewed by DOC <Date>		

Document History

Version	Author	Comment
Draft 06/26/03	Berend Cornelius	Initial draft
08/13/03	Berend Cornelius	Comments of FS worked in
Final <Date>		

Contents

Glossary	1

References	1

1	Motivation	1

2	Goals	1

2.1	How does this feature meet the requirements	1

2.2	How does this feature improve the program architecture	1

3	Dependencies	1

3.1	Technical Dependencies / Requirements	1

4	Detailed Specification	2

4.1	Error Conditions	3

5	Future Tasks	3

6	Legal Issues	3

7	Notes	3

Glossary

Term	Description
“Control group” or “Control Row”	In this context a control group represents all the controls that define a sorting criterion. The definition includes the fieldname and the type of sorting: Descending or ascending.
Successor listbox	In the following statements it is referred to the successor of a listbox (or successor listbox): This is the listbox that is directly positioned beneath the respective one according to Illustration 2.

References

JLF(Advanced Topics) Chapter 7 Wizards
http://java.sun.com/products/jlf/at/book/Wizards.html

User Interface Design Guidelines for Browser-Based Sun System Management Applications - Version 2.0, Chapter 13
http://cto.eng.sun.com/T_new/user_experience/hci-admin/uispec2_0/13-wizards.html

Motivation

The motivation is to improve the existing sorting dialogs mentioned above and preserve their consistency.

Goals

The goal is to provide a component that contains at least as many capabilities as the respective components in Microsoft Access's wizards (see their “Report wizard”) or Microsoft Excel.

Dependencies

Technical Dependencies / Requirements

To implement this specification there are no further requirements that the StarOffice API does not offer a solution for.

Detailed Specification

Overview

As to be seen in Illustration 2 the sorting criteria are represented by listboxes that are placed beneath one another. Each listbox contains all available set of fields (in the following called “fieldnames”) of which the sorting criteria can be chosen. The first item of each listbox always indicates, that no criterion is selected for the according controlrow. A radio button group next to each listbox gives evidence if the applied sorting criterion is to be “Ascending” or “Descending”. Their default state is “Ascending”. The maximum number of applicable sorting criteria is limited.

Illustration 1Sorting Component initialized with two Sorting criteria

Initialization with no predefined Sorting criteria

When no sorting criteria have been predefined the first Sorting listbox is initialized with all available fieldnames. The following sorting rows are disabled. Additionally the first item is named “none”. This is the first preselection.

Initialization with predefined Sorting criteria

For each defined sorting criterion the respective row is enabled and in the listbox the appropriate item selected. The row after the row representing the last criterion is enabled too and the preselection of the listbox is set to “(none)”.

Limitation of possible Sorting Critera

The maximum number of sorting criteria is 4.

Adding a Sorting criterion

If a Sorting criterion is added by selecting a fieldname in the listbox of the last controlrow the listbox successor is enabled and its first item (“none”) is selected (see Illustration 1).

Removing a Sorting criterion

If a listbox that does not represent the last criterion is set to “none” all following sorting criteria “move up” immediately after its selection. This means that each succeeding listbox will obtain a selection of the criterion of its directly succeeding listbox. The listbox formerly representing the last criterion will be set to “(none)”. Its radiogroup right of it is reset to “Ascending”.

Evaluation of the Sorting Criteria

The evaluation of the inserted sorting criteria takes place as soon as all criteria have been applied, for example by clicking the “Next” button in a wizard. But it does not have to happen right after each assignment of a sorting criterion.

Duplicate Sorting criteria

The component has to provide a way to detect duplicate sorting criteria (Illustration 2). If this occurs an exclamation messagebox must pop up pointing to the duplicate sorting criteria. It's within the responsibility of the user to remove this fault. In this case the sorting component must return a flag so that the calling routine can react appropriately.

Illustration 2 Duplicate Sorting criterion (Background is deprecated)

String list

Item	English	German	Comments
Fixed Line	~Sort by	~Sortieren nach	
Fixed Line	~Then by	~Anschließend nach	This resource is adapted to MS Excel. Previously it was “And then by”
Radio Button	Ascend~ing	Aufstei~gend	
Messagebox	The sort criterion '<FIELDNAME>' was chosen twice. Each criterion can only be chosen once.	Das Sortierkriterium '<FIELDNAME>' wurde zweimal ausgewählt. Jedes Sortierkriterium kann nur einmal ausgewählt werden.	This resouce string differs from MS Access. Ther it is: “You cannot sort by a field more than once. Remove the duplicate field(s).” In this message however no indication is made, which field is duplicate.
Listbox item	(none)	(keine)	First item in each listbox indicating that no sorting criterion is applied in that listbox.
Radio Button	Descend~ing	Abstei~gend	

Tab Order

The Tab order starts from the listbox representing the first criterion to the radio buttons right of it and then down to the next row of controls.

Key Board Shortcuts

No Key Board shortcuts will be applied.

Error Conditions

Errors must be passed passed over to the calling routine and handled there appropriately.

Notes

The specification in its current state (08/13/03) represents a simple version of the sorting component. If the Star Base team is going to implement an own sorting concept this specification might not be sufficient because it limits the number of possible sorting criteria. A scrollbar to administrate more sorting criteria than those that might fit on the dialog page raises again several problems:

Administrating many sorting criteria increase the need to insert and delete sorting criteria “in the middle” of the sorting criteria. Especially when only some of all the sorting criteria is seen in the dialog page this might not be intuitive to handle because many users will not understand what has happened when sorting criteria suddenly move up to fill the gap of a deleted position.

Specification of a Dialog Sorting Component

Page 4

http://dba.openoffice.org/specifications/DialogComponent_Sorting.sxw

Berend Cornelius

2003-06-23T14:58:16

Elizabeth Matthis