State name of office module in title bar

OpenOffice.org 2.0

Document - ID	Specification Owner	Last Change	Status
	Falko Tesch	11/19/03	Draft
Conforms to	PCD Requirement
Applies to	OpenOffice.org, all modules
Task ID(s)	20125
Category	Feature Request

Abstract

Instead of showing the filename or the title (if available) and the office name within the caption now the file name of the document plus the office components name will at display.

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

	Name	E-mail Address
User Experience	Falko Tesch	falko@sun.com
Development	Oliver Specht	Oliver.specht@sun.com
Quality Assurance	Thorsten Martens	Thorsten.martens.@sun.com
Documentation	Uwe Fischer	Uwe.fischer@sun.com

Approved for Implementation

	Approved by	Date
User Experience	<Name>	<Date>
Development		
Quality Assurance		
Documentation		
String Review		

Document Change History

Rev. Level	Change	Initials	Date
1.0	Falko Tesch	FT	20.11.2003

Contents

Glossary	1

1	Motivation	1

2	User Scenario	1

3	Goals	1

4	Requirements and Dependencies	2

4.1	Requirements	2

4.2	Technical Dependencies	2

5	Competitive Analyses	2

6	Detailed Specification	2

6.1	Additional Request	3

6.2	Error Conditions	3

7	Future Tasks	4

8	Notes	4

9	References	4

Glossary

Term	Description
%PRODUCTNAME	A placeholder for the current name of the office, like “OpenOffice.org”
%PRODUCTVERSION	A placeholder for the version of the office, like “2.0”
MDI	Multi Document Interface, multiple document are opened in one application window
SDI	Single Document Interface, every document opens in its own window
Caption	The text/content that is displayed as information about the program within the operating system environment

Motivation

For the moment all open documents place their title name within the caption bar followed by the %PRODUCTNAME %PRODUCTVERSION string. This leads to confusion since the caption bar does not state what kind of document is currently open, e.g. a Writer document and a Calc spreadsheet. This situation gets even more unclear once the user looks for those document windows in the task bar. Here only the file name and a little icon (if the window manager supports this) are available for distinction. To avoid such unclarity it is advisable to add the office' module name into the caption bar. Furthermore it might be advisable to drop the %PRODUCTVERSION string instead (to keep the caption bars string length at hand).

User Scenario

A user works with Writer, Calc and Impress the same time. He opens and creates three documents, one Writer, one Impress and one Calc.

Since his project he is working on is named “Fiscal Year 2004” he chooses this as the title for all three of them. What happens now is that all three application windows display the following string in their caption bar:

[ICON] Fiscal Year 2004 - OpenOffice.org 1.1

The only way for the user to distinguish in between his three documents is the icon [ICON]. But in case of an Window Manager that does not support icons even that little hint for distinction is gone.

Note: This caption string is used everywhere within the OS (taskbar, task pane, caption bar etc.)

Goals

Define a new caption label for all office applications to make it easier to distinct in between applications and/or file names.

Requirements and Dependencies

Requirements

none

Technical Dependencies

none

Competitive Analyses

Under Windows 2000/XP, KDE 3.1* and Gnome 2.2* a caption always consists about an application icon and a title. (* this goes only for the standard themes on these window managers!)

Most applications like MS Office, KOffice, Lotus Smartsuite or Corel Office have their application name and the file name of the current open document displayed in their captions.

Since they all have the same information within their caption they do not have always the same sequence. Some, like MS Word or Kword first list the file name and then the application name others like MS Excel do it vice versa.

In all cases this depends if the application uses an MDI or SDI.

MDI applications have their application name first and the current active file name second.

SDI applications have the file name first and the application name second.

Detailed Specification

OpenOffice.org will change its caption according to what (most) other SDI applications conform to:

[ICON] File Name - %PRODUCTNAME Application Name

File Name:

The physical name of a file without its extension (.s[x|t][cdimw], .html, .doc, etc.)

Application Name:

Name of the office module. Writer, Writer/WEB, Calc, Impress, Draw or Math

Example: A document with the title (“File - Properties - Tab Page: Description - Title”) “Fiscal Year 2004” and the file name “FY_04.sxw” produces currently a caption reading: Fiscal Year 2004 - OpenOffice.org 1.1. This will change to: FY_04 - OpenOffice.org Writer

Reasons:

The caption must carry the application name in its caption to give the user a hint what application is running.

There is no need to display a version number in a caption. If a document, no matter what version it was created with, can be opened by an application the version number becomes obsolete and might rather add to confusion.

Even if a document has a title (most don't) in some cases the title differs from the real file name. Also many users saving their document under another file name are confused to find the caption bar not changing the document title.
Since all OS nowadays support long filenames (incl. spaces) most users will anyway use expressive filenames instead (and use them also for titles if at all) and will tend to remember (and search) for the filename.

String list

Item	English	German	Comments
Caption	Writer	Writer	Application name for text processor
Caption	Writer/Web	Writer/Web	Application name for text processor in HTML mode
Caption	Calc	Calc	Application name for spreadsheet
Caption	Impress	Impress	Application name for presentation
Caption	Draw	Draw	Application name for drawing module
Caption	Math	Math	Application name for formula editor
Caption	Chart	Chart	Application name for chart module

Additional Request

This goes for Impress and Writer only!

If one saves a presentation or text document normally he/she must input a filename. Instead Writer and Impress can already suggest a name by using the first word of a Writer document or the first word of a title object of the first slide of an Impress presentation as a file name suggestion.

This filename suggestion must appear selected within the file save dialogue. It must take the user only a single keyboard strike to substitute or erase this suggestion from the text filed of the dialogue.

In case the same filename already exists add a continuos number to the filename (like Test1, Test2,..)

Only use the first word. Use the word-break-iterator to determine this word.

Use only the first word from a title object. If the first slide does not contain a title object than do not apply this automatism.

Apply the above automatism only as long as the document is untitled. Never overwrite an existing filename.

Tab Order

none

Key Board Shortcuts

none

Error Conditions

none

Future Tasks

none

Notes

References

Required - Give references to related documentation, such as engineering designs, technical specs, and other sources for related units. Also include links to documents that other sections in this spec need to refer to, such as user opinions usability test reports.

State name of office module in title bar

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State name of office module in title bar

Falko Tesch

2003-11-19T15:41:44