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Released: Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15

Meeting Minutes

OpenOffice.org

Weekly Meeting common User Interface (CUI)

Date

September 5th 2002

Time

10:00h, MEST

Location

Cupertino

Attendees

+ Hans-Peter Burow (PB)
+ Christian Jansen (CJ)
- Matthias Müller-Prove (MMP)
+ Frank Schönheit (FS)
+ Oliver Specht (OS)
+ Gunnar Tim (GT)
+ Christian Lippka (CL)
- Daniel Rentz (DR)

Minute Taker

FS (next: GT, PB, MMP, OS, DR, CJ, CL)

Distribution List

http://ui.openoffice.org/protocols

Table of Contents

1 Action Items

2 Roundtable


1 Action Items

Item

Responsible

Status

previous items

resource-level support of HC images/bitmaps, discuss implementation with Philipp Lohmann (PL)

CL

open

Invite MBA and SSA to discuss floating window issues

CJ

open

new items

Invgestigate Tools/Options layout (2.1)

CJ


Collect occurences of "do not show this again" dialogs (2.2)

all


Look for guidelines regarding "do not show this again" dialogs (2.2)

CJ


Discuss new read-only cursor with Frank Loehmann (2.3)

FS



2 Roundtable

2.1 Tools/Options

FS told that now that we have much more tab pages in the options dialog's “OpenOffice.org” section, the initial state of the dialog is quite ugly in some languages. For instance, in german, some texts are wide enough to not fit into the left hand side pane anymore when a vertical scrollbar is visible (which is the default when the "OpenOffice.org" section is expanded due to the higher number of pages).

As others did not yet encounter this problem, it needs to investigated if this is a special german-only problem. CJ volunteered to investigate this.

2.2 "do not show this again" options

Recently, some warning dialogs have been introduced in various places where a checkbox allows the user to permanently switch off this kind of warnings ("do not show this again").

As all these new options currently do not have a possibility to be switched on, again (instead of re-installing :), FS asked if we should at least document all the current places where such a dialog is used. Claiming that in the future, we need to allow to switch on them (see below), we should not start collecting all places then, but now and here while we implement them.

There was a discussion about whether or not it is really necessary to switch on such warnings, once the user said "don't show this again" in some first place. However, the attendees agreed that it can happen too easily that a user clicks away such a warning, without really reading and understanding it, but with checking the option which prevents the warning in the future. In such cases, switching it on again may be wished.

No concrete design (neither for the UI nor technical) was made yet about how to implement such a "switch on again" later (it was not really considered a concrete need for action), but we agreed to collect all the places where we currently have such dialogs.

As especially the concrete implementation (one switch for all settings, or many switches for single settings) were discussed, CJ volunteered to look for guidelines regarding this topic.

2.3 Cursor in read-only Text Documents

FS raised that the newly implemented feature of a cursor in read-only documents is somewhat strange, in his opinion. First, the default is "on", which means in a new installation, when opening a text document readonly, a (non-blinking) cursor is visible, which is somewhat irritating. Second, the option to turn off this is to be found in Tools/OpenOffice.org/Accessibility, while the user would probably expect Tools/Options/Text document or such.

FS is to discuss this behaviour with Frank Loehmann, who originally designed this.

2.4 Assigning Macros to Keyboard Events

CJ told that currently, to assign a macro to a keyboard event (respectively shortcut), in OpenOffice.org 19 mouse clicks are necessary, which he considered way too much (where all attendees agreed :). CJ asked what possibilities we have to changes this, but given that the current dialog for this is to be changed, anyway (as it is pretty old-fashioned and a real pain in the neck, not only with respect to keyboard configuration), the attendees agreed that the problem should be solved during the complete re-design.



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