Unification of positoning of text frames and drawings

StarOffice 8 / OpenOffice.org 2.0

Document - ID	Specification Owner	Last Change	Status
	Oliver Specht	25/02/04	Draft
Conforms to	
Applies to	Writer
Task ID(s)	iz 24552
Category	Feature

Abstract

Provide the same positioning options to drawing objects that are already available for Writer's text frames, graphics and OLE objects to improve flexibility and interoperability to MS Word.

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

	Name	E-mail Address
User Experience	Christian Jansen (CJ)	Christian.Jansen@sun.com
Development	Oliver Specht (OS)	Oliver.Specht@sun.com
Quality Assurance	Michael Rüß (MRU)	Michael.Ruess@sun.com
Documentation	Uwe Fischer (UFI)	Uwe.Fischer@sun.com

Approved for Implementation

	Approved by	Date
User Experience	Christian Jansen(CJ)	04/28/2004
Development	Oliver Specht (OS)	04/26/2004
Quality Assurance	Michaell Rüß (MRU	04/30/2004
Documentation	Uwe Fischer (UFI)	04/26/2004
String Review	- no string changes -	

Document Change History

Rev. Level	Change	Initials	Date
1.0	Oliver Specht	OS	25.02.04
1.1	Changes for multiple selections and group elements	OS	16.04.04

Contents

Glossary	1

1	Motivation	1

2	User Scenarios	1

3	Goals	1

4	Requirements and Dependencies	1

4.1	Requirements	1

4.2	Technical Dependencies	1

5	Competitive Analyses	1

6	Detailed Specification	1

6.1	G11n	2

6.2	Error Conditions	2

7	Future Tasks	2

8	Notes	2

9	References	2

Glossary

Term	Description

Motivation

Positoning of drawing objects on one side and Writer text frames, graphics and OLE objects is different. Drawing objects have less positioning flexibility. MS Word doesn't make a difference in the positioning of the related objects. Unifying the positioning will address this.

Status of object positioning in OpenOffice.org 1.1 Writer

Illustration 1Positioning dialog page for frames Illustration 2Positioning dialog page for drawing objects

Illustration 4Anchoring options of drawing objects in the context menu Illustration 3Anchoring options for frames in the context menu

Illustration 6Anchoring options for drawing objects in the toolbox Illustration 5Anchoring options for frames in the toolbox

Illustration 7Base point control The Base point controls available in the positioning dialog of drawing objects in OpenOffice.org 1.1 have to be dropped for two reasons. One is that the available space of the tab page is not sufficient to merge both the old and the new dialog controls completely. The other and more important is that the references selected in these controls are applied when the document is closed and not while it is open. This leads to inconsistently calculated values of the position.

The dialog page for drawing objects does not support relative width/height.

Multiple selections

When multiple drawing objects are selected when the dialog is opended some restrictions apply:

If the objects are anchored with different anchor types or anchor positions it's not possible to change the positoning. All position related controls are disabled. The CheckBox Protect/Position is also disabled.

The Listbox Anchor is not disabled but it doesn't work and it should be disabled.

If all anchor types and positions match the position and anchor type can be changed. The relative positions in the selection of objects stay the same.

Changing the anchor to “As character” does not keep the relative positions of the objects.

User Scenarios

A user wants to position a drawing object in the page border relative to a given paragraph.

A drawing object needs to be positioned relative to a character position.

Goals

Goal of this specification is to enhance the interoperability with MS Word as well as to ease the migration from MS Word to Writer.

Requirements and Dependencies

Requirements

None

Technical Dependencies

None

Competitive Analyses

The competitive analyses will consider MS Word only since this specification is about MS interoperability.

In MS Word there is not difference in the positioning of text boxes, graphics and OLE objects and other floating objects.

Detailed Specification

To reach the goals of unifiying the positioning the dialogs and tools to change the position of drawing objects have to provide all currently available options that are provided for text frames.

This also applies to future extensions of the positioning of frames.

Illustration 8Positioning dialog page for frames

Illustration 9New positioning dialog page for drawings

The illustrations above show the changed dialog pages for frames and drawings.

Multiple selection drawing of objects

When multiple objects are selected some of the functions of the dialog do not make sense anymore and have to be disabled/changed depending on the anchor types and positions of the objects contained in the selection.

If all objects are anchored at the same anchor type and position all controls insided of the group “Postion” have to be in tri-state mode. The ListBoxes Horizontal and Vertical do only contain the entries “From left” and “From top” respectively (or the related entries for vertical or right-to-left layout).

If the anchor types inside of the selection are different or the object are anchored to different anchors then all controls in the group “Position” have to be disabled.

The CheckBox Protection/Position is not disabled.

Editing of elements of a group of drawing objects

When an object of an entered group of drawings is edited the dialog acts like described for multiple selections with same anchors.

String list

No strings will be added.

Tab Order

The tab order follows the default. Starting with the "Size" group, then "Anchor", "Protection" and "Position".

Inside of the group is left to right, top to bottom.

G11n

None

Error Conditions

None

Future Tasks

None

Notes

References

Specifications the influence the positioning dialog page for frames:

http://specs.openoffice.org/writer/compatibility/negative_positions_for_Writer_fly_frames.sxw

http://specs.openoffice.org/writer/compatibility/vertical_alignment_at_page_areas.sxw

http://specs.openoffice.org/writer/compatibility/vertical_alignment_to_text_line.sxw

Unification of positoning of text frames and drawings

Page 5

http://specs.openoffice.org/writer/compatibility/unification_of_object_positioning.sxw

Oliver Specht

2004-01-19T13:27:15