Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 9289
[RFE] form auto pilot should create documents which do open in design mode
Last modified: 2013-08-07 15:45:41 UTC
For unexperienced users which do not yet know about the difference between editing a document and designing the form layer of a document, and thus the difference between the form design and alive mode, the following may cause (aka causes) irritations: * they create a form document, using the auto pilot * they want to edit some of it's aspects, thus open the document for editing => the form is still alive (containing data), and they don't know how to reach the mode for editing the controls theirself (instead of their data content) We should think about changing the "open in design mode" setting when a form is created using the pilot (The property at the document model is "ApplyFormDesignMode"). This would not contradict the usual default of this setting: for newly created documents, it is "off", means if they are opened for editing, the form layer is alive and bound to it's data source. This was to prevent data loss in scenarios where people use form documents for data input _not_ bound to a database, i.e. if they use the form controls to normally enter text (or whatever) and want to store this in the _document_ (instead of a database). So this argument for having this setting swicthed "off" does not hold, as the form auto pilot always generates documents storing their control data in a database.
removed superfluous "which" from summary
I suggest to implement this behaviour for a future version. Generally the formwizard does not behave consistent to the new report wizard as it does not provide a "Storing page" where you can make all kinds of settings before you store the document/template. One of the settings that could be offered would be the option to save the document in Edit mode or not.
not sure if this should be an explicit option. At least I think that before making it explicit, changing the current default would be a good first step. I encountered people (in german newsgroups) who were irritated by opening the form for editing, and it still showed the data (and the controls could not be edited). I suppose that for forms generated by the auto pilot, the most often done task when the user opens the document for edit is to edit the _form_controls_, not to edit the writer part of the document. So I think a default of "open in design mode" would make more sense for pilot-generated documents than the other way round.
I disagree to make the Edit Mode the default mode because a) the current default mode has been choosen after a discussion and changing the default mode now would confuse the users who are already familiar with the autopilot now and who would probably think of a bug because "the connection to the datasource ist lost". b)The general concept of our wizards is to provide a "ready to use" result that suits for "the general user". The more sophistacated user shall be free to adapt the result to his very own needs, but "Betty Miller" who has lower demands should not be bothered with subsequent modifcation of the resulting document. In this respect the formwizard behaves consistently to other wizards.
Well, the bug resulted exactly from a complaint from Betty Miller :). Namely from a user in a german newsgroup who wanted to edit his form, and was unable to find out how. Especially, he complained about the difference between SO 5.2 and SO 6.0/OOo 1.0 - in 5.2 it was exactly how I suggest now. So in this sense, neither Betty Miller nor consistence are good arguments, in my opinion :). For the additional setting to be made: I don't suggest that the document should be in design mode when finished - this should stay as it is now, means the document is ready to use. What I suggest is to change the option "open in design mode" from no to yes. The scenario I imagine is as follows: * the pilot finished, the document is ready to use (because it's design mode is off) * if the user does not need to modify it, she will mostly access the document by opening it from the data source administration dialog, or from the data source browser. In both cases, the whole document is opened in read-only mode, thus the "design mode" settings do not even apply. * if the user wants to make modifications, then she will certainly open the document for editing from the data source administration dialog or the data source browser, and in this case, though she wants to edit the controls, she needs an additional click to switch off the design mode. If we would do the the change as suggested, then this additional click would not be necessary. I simply think that whenever a user opens a form document for editing, she means "edit the form layer", not "edit the writer document excluding the form layer". We could reach this by changing the default, and admittedly we could also reach this by switching the design mode off explicitly when opening the document from within the data source adminstration dialog/browser. Perhaps the latter is an option, too. For the current default ("open in design mode off by default"): I never liked it, and indeed I think that the arguments about "data loss" which lead to it were not really valid. The change targeted the more experienced users, and tried to remove a trap which they can fall into, while what I suggest here would remove a trap for unexperienced users. If in doubt, I would always prefer the latter, simply because experienced users have a better chance to avoid traps by theirself, so we should care more for the unexperienced ones.
BC: Target set to OOo 2.0
change subcomponent to 'none'
according to the announcement on releases (http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=releases&msgNo=7503) this issue will be re-targeted to OOo Later.
This issue has been considered in the task #i20424# (Q-PCD Database-12 - extend FormWizard with Sub-Forms). Therefor I close the bug.
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