Borders and Shadow for Bitmap Objects

OpenOffice.org 2.0 and StarOffice 8

Document - ID	Specification Owner	Last Change	Status
	Frank Loehmann	06.23.04	Final
Conforms to	
Applies to	Draw, Impress and Calc
Task ID(s)	i25616 and 114467
Category	Feature

Abstract

Graphic objects in OpenOffice.org (Bitmaps, Metafiles) need to be extended to have a shadow attribute. Furthermore they will need a line and fill style which will define a border around the graphic object and a fill pattern below the bitmap.

To get different corner rounding styles it is also necessary to add a corner rounding for all kinds of objects which can have line styles.

i-Team Members (The specification owner is part of the i-Team)

	Name	E-mail Address
User Experience	Frank Loehmann (FL)	frank.loehmann@sun.com
Development	Armin Le Grand (AW)	armin.le.grand@sun.com
Quality Assurance	Wolfram Garten (WG)	wolfram.garten@sun.com
Documentation	Uwe Fischer	uwe.fischer@sun.com

Approved for Implementation

	Approved by	Date
User Experience	Frank Loehmann	14.05.04
Development	Armin Le Grand	14.05.04
Quality Assurance	Wolfram Garten	14.05.04
Documentation	Uwe Fischer	14.05.04
String Review	Elizabeth Matthis	23.06.04

Document Change History

Rev. Level	Change	Initials	Date
1.0	1. Draft of Spec.	FL	07.05.04
1.1	Pre-Final	FL	12.05.04
1.2	Work on comments from AW	FL	13.05.04
1.3	Change preview in Line dialog and edge into corner	FL	17.05.04
1.4	Rework spec. to new implementation	FL	07.06.04

Contents

Glossary	1

2	Motivation	1

3	User Scenarios	1

3.1	PPT Import: Shadow - User Scenario A	1

3.2	PPT Import: Border - User Scenario B	1

3.3	Rounding Corners - User Scenario C	2

4	Goals	2

5	Requirements and Dependencies	2

5.1	Requirements	2

5.2	Technical Dependencies	2

6	Competitive Analyses	2

6.1	Microsoft PowerPoint 2003	2

6.2	OpenOffice.org 1.1	2

6	Detailed Specification	3

6.1	Border, Filling and Shadows for Graphics	3

6.2	New Border Control and Preview in Line Dialog	5

6.3	dG11n	6

6.4	Migration	6

7	Future Tasks	6

8	Notes	7

9	References	7

Glossary

Term	Description
DrawingLayer	The drawing layer is the "home" of all drawing objects in OO.org. Draw and Impress document consists of this DrawingLayer, but also Writer and Calc offer this layer to store and handle graphical objects. Please note: Writer has an own implementation to handle Graphics. So if a graphic (BMP) is inserted into a Writer document, it is handled as a Writer frame and not as a drawing object.
GUI	Acronym for Graphical User Interface

Motivation

Bitmap objects in OpenOffice.org (OO.org) 1.1 do not support borders, fillings and shadows.

Furthermore the attribute to change the corner style (round, etc.) for borders is not available on the graphical user interface (GUI) of OO.org 1.1 today. The border itself for graphical objects should be defined to always be outside the graphic object to avoid to have parts of the object invisible.

User Scenarios

PPT Import: Shadow - User Scenario A

Scenario description:

Shadow of graphic objects (BMPs) is missing after importing Microsoft PowerPoint documents.

Problem description:

Drawing Layer used in Draw, Impress, Calc (and Writer) does not support shadows for BMPs

Solution(s):

Add support for those shadows to the drawing layer core and offer a new GUI interface for the user.

PPT Import: Border - User Scenario B

Scenario description:

Border and filling of graphic objects (BMPs) is missing after importing Microsoft PowerPoint documents.

Problem description:

Drawing Layer used in Draw, Impress, Calc does not support borders for bitmaps and fillings (BMPs)

Solution(s):

Add support for borders and fillings to the drawing layer core and offer a new GUI interface for the user.

Rounding Corners - User Scenario C

Scenario description:

Corners of objects with a border attribute and a thick line style assigned have rounded corners.

Problem description:

The corners of objects which could have a line attribute are always rounded.

Solution(s):

Allow to assign an attribute (none, rounded, miter and bevel) for corners for every object that could have a border attribute.

Goals

Improve import of Microsoft PowerPoint files (interoperability) and usability of handling borders (automatic distance to text). Furthermore the style of corners can be set individually per object.

Requirements and Dependencies

Requirements

Please see user scenarios section above.

Technical Dependencies

none

Competitive Analyses

Microsoft PowerPoint 2003

Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 allows to add a border and a shadow attribute to graphics. This border is always draw to the outside of the object and so does not overlay the content.

OpenOffice.org 1.1

Shadows and borders are not supported.

The corner style cannot be set in OO.org 1.1. This results in rounded Corners when a thick border is assigned to an object.

Illustration 1 A thick border line (or higher zoom level) always results in rounded corners in OO.org 1.1

Detailed Specification

Border, Filling and Shadows for Graphics

Graphical objects (BMP) on the DrawingLayer can have a border, a filling and a shadow like any other drawing object. Therefore a three new button have been added to the Graphics Object Bar as shown in the following.

Draw and Impress

Illustration 2 The graphics object bar contains a new line, area and shadow button (red circled) like it is already known for all other object types

Calc

Illustration 3 New Line, Area and Shadow button in Graphics toolbar in Calc

Writer

Writer has still its own graphic handling in OO.org 2.0 and so nothing is changed in Writer.

New Main Menu Entry for Graphics

The Line and Area menu entries call the Line/Area dialogs.

Illustration 4 Draw and Impress menu change in the same way.

Context Menu for Graphic

This following entry is the new top entry of the context menu for graphics. The rest of the menu is left unchanged (Line and Area entries are not shown for bitmap objects).

Item	English	German	Comments
Context Menu Item	Line...	Linie...	Already present translation
	Area...	Fläche...	Already present translation

New Border Control and Preview in Line Dialog

The corner style is a new attribute which can be set in the GUI. Please find the list box content in the string table below.

Overworked Preview

The line preview is now separated into 3 objects to allow a preview of the corner style. The left object shows the line and line ends as already know. The two smaller objects allow to demonstrate the corner style. The thickness of the line is the same as for the line and line end preview object.

Illustration 5 Demo how the different corner styles will look like

Illustration 6 New corner style setting in the Line dialog

Item	English	German	Comments
Text	Corner style	Eckenstil	
Label	Sty~le	Sti~l	
List box content	Rounded	Abgerundet	(is the default)
List box content	- none -	- kein -	
List box content	Mitered	Gehrung	
List box content	Beveled	Abgeschrägt	

dG11n

none

Migration

The export in the OO.org 1.1 format has to consider that the border attribute was always set to "true" in the old OO.org 1.1 format.

Future Tasks

none

Notes

none

References

none

Borders and Shadow for Bitmap Objects

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http://specs.openoffice.org/appwide/drawing_layer/borders_and_shadow_for_bitmap_objects.sxw

2004-05-07T14:51:07