Better Interoperability with MS Comments in PPT

OpenOffice.org 2.0

Task ID(s)

<Required - Tasklist comma separated.>

Category	Specification Affects

<Other>

Abstract

Interoperability with MS Comments will be enhanced by implementing a comment shape in the drawing layer that stores unformated textual comments inside a presentation or drawing page and the information about which user created them and the date&time stamp of creation. These shapes will have a small and space saving iconic look and will show their text on mouse click. These shapes will not be visible during a presentation and when printing a document. Having these comment shapes makes it also easy to keep the comments from PowerPoint documents persistent.

Feature Team

Specification Owner	Christian Lippka Frank Loehmann	Christian.Lippka@sun.com Frank.loehmann@sun.com
Marketing Contact	-	-
User Experience Contact	Christian Jansen	Christian.Jansen@sun.com
Development Contact	Christian Lippka	Christian.Lippka@sun.com
Quality Assurance Contact	Christian Gühnter	Christian.Guenther@sun.com
Documentation Contact		

Document History

Version	Author	Comment
Draft <Date>	Christian Lippka	Initial draft
...		
Specification Review <Date>		
...		
UI String Review <Date>		
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	Dependancies	1

3.1	Technical Dependancies/Requirements	1

4	Detailed Specification	1

4.1	Comment rendering	2

4.2	Comment creation	2

4.3	Comment editing	2

4.4	Comment visibility	2

4.5	Comment API	2

4.6	Error Conditions	3

5	Future Tasks	3

6	Legal Issues	3

7	Notes	3

Glossary

Term	Description
<Term 1>	

References

”Q” MS-Interoperability PRD

Motivation

Enhancing MS-Interoperability is a key feature to meet customer requirements. By adding core support for comment shapes we can improve feature conversion completeness for importing and exporting MS PowerPoint files.

Goals

This feature will provide complete dataloss free conversion from MS PowerPoint Comment Shapes to StarOffice Impress and back. This feature will provide the user with an interface to create, view and edit such comments that is as easy to use as that of MS PowerPoint. This will not include web collaboration features and document merge features from MS PowerPoint.

How does this feature meet the requirements

This feature meets the requirements of improving interoperability with MS Comments by adding support for this feature that was not supported by previous versions of StarOffice. The contents of comments will be keept persistent and the user will be able to work with these comments in StarOffice Impress natively.

How does this feature improve the program architecture

<Recommended - Descripe how this feature will improve the program architecture.>

Competitive Analysis

Dependancies

Technical Dependancies/Requirements

<Recommended - Are there any requirements or dependencies for this feature? Does the implementation of this feature create any requirements/dependencies to other program parts?>

Detailed Specification

A comment consists of four parts, its name, its contents, its meta information and its position.

The Name of a comment consist of two parts. The first part is either the initials of the current user, if available, or the letter 'C'. The second part is a non negative, non null integer number that is used to make the comment unique. The first created comment in a document gets the number '1'.

The contents of a comment is unformated text. This text can be edited by the user at any time.

The meta information of a comment include the initials of the user that created this comment or did the latest changes to its contents. Also included is the date of the last change to the comment contents.

The position of a comment places the comment shape on its page.

Comment rendering

Comments are rendered in two different modes. The iconic mode just displays the comment name inside a bitmap icon. The edit mode displays the meta information and the contents next to the comment. In this mode, the contents is also editable.

C1 Zeichnung 1Comment in iconic view C1 CL	11/22/03 This is a comment contents! Zeichnung 2Comment in full view

Comment creation

Comments are placed on the current page by using the menu or toolbar entry “Insert Comment”. They will be placed initially in the top left corner of the document. They will get an unique name and the user initials and the current timestamp.

Comment editing

Comments are switched from iconic mode into full mode by a double click with the mouse or by selecting the comment and pressing the return key (TODO: or any other?). The comment is then switched to full mode until it losses the focus. When the user clicks in the content area he is abele to change the comment contents by using the keyboard. If the user makes a change to another users's comment, his initials appear on it, and he becomes the author of that comment. The timestamp will also be updated after edit.

Comment visibility

Comments are not printable and are not visible during a presentation. The visibility for all comments can be toggled by a menu entry view/markup or the corresponding toolbar entry. Since comments are a little special when it comes to visibility, they will be added to a new default layer called 'Markup' which will later also be used for other kinds of user markups that are only visible during edit.

Comment API

A comment shape will be defined by the service com.sun.star.drawing.CommentShape which will support the service com.sun.star.drawing.Shape and will provide none of the optional members. It will support the following properties

Property	Type	Description
Author	String	Identifier of the user that recently created/changed this comment
ModifyDate	DateTime	Last date of modification or creation date
Comment	String	The unformated comment contents
Name	String	The comments name
ZOrder	Long	The comments Z order in relation to other shapes

Item	English	German	Comments
Menu	Insert Comment	Kommentar einfügen	
Status Line	Comment	Kommentar	

<Tab Order>

<Required. It makes sense to describe or visualize the tabbing order. The description of the tab order has to contain which control has the initial focus.>

<Key Board Shortcuts>

<Required - Key Board shortcuts used in dialogs have to be listed in a table with a small description.>

Error Conditions

<Required - List all error conditions, and the action the system takes about them. If an alert box comes up, which kind is it? Include exact text of messages, or say what points need to be covered. Error Messages need a string list>

Future Tasks

<Recommended - If there are features which couldn't be implemented but have to be implemented in the future. State these in here with a description why the feature couldn't be implemented right now.>

Legal Issues

<Recommended - If there are any legal issues to deal with the should be described here. Legal issues could be for example we have to redistribute third party technology. This section can also contain links the Legal Review Tool.If the Specification will be published on OpenOffice.org this section has to be removed.>

Notes

<Recommended - Questions will arise during the writing of the specification. State these in here.>

Better Interoperability with MS Comments in PPT

Page 4

http://staroffice-doc/internal/Projects/StarOffice/SO_Q/Marketing/FSD/MS_Interoperability/CommentShapes.sxw

Better Interoperability with MS Comments in PPT

Christian Lippka

2003-04-28T11:21:58