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Released: Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15

OpenOffice.org Writer Specifications

Name

Description

Author

Status

Target

Date

Assigning Styles

The Styles control of the Text Object Bar offers a set of common used styles -- like Headings 1 to 3 -- even if they are not currently used in the document. The Styles control can also be used to define new paragraph styles based on the current selection. The relation of the Stylist control and the "Styles" tool window -- which used to be the "Stylist" in OOo1.1) -- is more tight. This is done by adding command items to the Styles control to open the "Styles" tool window. The commands to remove styles are aligned between Styles control and the Format menu, respectively the text context menu.

Frank Loehmann

Final

2.0

11/07/03

compatibility.sxw

This document is a specification for the OpenOffice.org application compatibility options which can be applied to document users are currently working on.

Christian Jansen

2nd Draft

2.0

08/26/03

External Leading

This document is a specification for the "External Leading" compatibility option.

Frank Meies

Final

2.0

2003-10-07

Tables: Automatic Page and Column Breaks

This document is a specification for the table enhancement that allows table rows to split at page or column breaks.

Frank Meies

Final

2.0

2003-12-01

Tabstops: General compatibility issues

This document specifies some changes of the behavior of tabstops.

Frank Meies

Final

2.0

2003-12-18

Hidden Text

This document is a specification to format text with the attribute hidden. This features adds more interoperability with existing office suites to the user.

Falko Tesch

Final

2.0

11.12.03

Writer Caption Dialog

The usability of the Insert - Caption dialog in OpenOffice 2.0 Writer will be enhanced.

The new designed dialog preview and the new possibility to add separators from the category label/number to the caption text itself prevents the user from making mistakes and saves rework time. The category label and number could be suppressed. This is very helpful for creating a news-letters etc. The new possibility to assign a character style to the category label and number also saves time. Furthermore the AutoCaption dialog will be adjusted and will be promoted in the Caption dialog.

Frank Loehmann

Final

2.0

10/13/03

Numbering and Bullets Part 1

Interoperability between other text processors and OpenOffice.org (OO.org) Writer has to be further improved for OO.org 2.0. The document conversion ability for documents containing bullet lists or numberings into Writer documents is improved by extending the software core functionality of bullet/numbering functionality

Frank Loehmann

final

2.0

11/07/03

General Undo Enhancements in Writer

Some core functionality is needed to be undoable. Examples are changing styles, tables, fields. The representation of actions in the undo/redo stack needs to be verbose enough to allow an unambiguous mapping to the actions. Not only the kind of action is to be displayed but also information about the object. E.g., if the user deletes several words by backspace, he gets an undo action for each word. Without additional information about the deleted word it is difficult to see which entry in the undo stack belongs to which deleted word.

Henning Brinkmann

Final

2.0

12/18/03

Undo of Fields and Header & Footer Changes

Undo for header & footer changes in OOo 2.0 Writer is possible. Also, all edits of fields are tracked for undo.

Henning Brinkmann

Draft

2.0

11/03/03

Negative positions for Writer flyframes

Allow negative positions for Writer fly frames without considering its wrapping style in the area above its anchor.

Oliver-Rainer Düsterhöft

Final

2.0

2003-11-19

Follow text flow vs. leaving layout environment for Writer fly frames

Specification of new option 'Follow text flow' for Writer fly frames that are anchored to paragraph or to character to control, if they have to follow the text flow or can leave their layout environment.

Oliver-Rainer Düsterhöft

Final

2.0

2003-11-19

Vertical alignments at page areas for Writer fly frames

Introduction of vertical alignments at page area for Writer fly frames that are anchored to paragraph or to character.

Oliver-Rainer Düsterhöft

Final

2.0

2003-11-20

Adjust terms and introduce 'Follow text flow' for to frame anchored Writer fly frames

Correction of terms for current possible vertical alignments and introduction of new option 'Follow text flow' for to frame anchored Writer fly frames.

Oliver-Rainer Düsterhöft

Final

2.0

2003-11-20

Vertical alignment 'Line of text' for to character anchored Writer fly frames

Introduce vertical alignment at line for to character anchored Writer fly frames.

Oliver-Rainer Düsterhöft

Final

2.0

2004-01-05

Adjustment of the formatting of text lines with proportional line spacing

Change the formatting of text lines with a given proportional line spacing to meet the requirements of the interoperability to MS Word.

Oliver-Rainer Düsterhöft

Final

2.0

2004-02-06

Adjust the formatting of table cells

Change the formatting of table cells controlled by a compatibility option to meet the requirements of the interoperability to MS Word.

Oliver-Rainer Düsterhöft

Final

2.0

2004-02-13

New option 'Merge borders/shadow with next paragraph'

Introduce new option 'Merge borders/shadow with next paragraph' for paragraphs and paragraph styles.

Oliver-Rainer Düsterhöft

Final

2.0

2004-02-18

Adjust positioning of floating screen objects

Change the positioning of floating screen objects controlled by a compatibility option to meet the requirements of the interoperability to MS Word. The adjustment affects the determination of the paragraph top for the positioning of floating screen objects.

Oliver-Rainer Düsterhöft

Final

2.0

2004-03-02

Adjust text wrapping

Change text wrapping controlled by a compatibility option to meet the requirements of the interoperability to MS Word. The adjustment affects the text wrapping around objects.

Hans-Peter Burow

Final

2.0

2004-04-27

Positioning of floating screen objects with considering its wrapping style

Due to meet the requirements of MS-Interoperability the positioning of floating screen objects has to be adjusted in such a way, that its own wrapping style and the wrapping styles of the other floating screen objects isn't considered. Simply spoken, a floating screen object will get the same position it would have, if its wrapping style is 'Through'.

Oliver-Rainer Düsterhöft

Final

2.0

2004-05-27

New Letter Wizard

As a replacement for the old Letter Wizard, the new concept introduces a better gui and better localization features. Also the output is supposed to conform to current norms.

Tom Verbeek

Draft

2.0

10/01/03

New Fax Wizard

As a replacement for the old Fax Wizard, the new concept introduces a better gui and better localization features. Also the output is supposed to conform to current norms.

Tom Verbeek

Final

2.0

02/07/04

New Agenda Wizard

As a replacement for the old Agenda Wizard, the new concept introduces a better gui and better localization features. Also the output is supposed to conform to current norms.

Ron Piterman

Final

2.0

02/07/04

Allow Vertical Text in Writer Table Cells

A specification to define vertical text in Writer cells, behaviour and UI.

Frank Meies, Falko Tesch

Final

2.0

2004-03-15

Allow Tables in Table Cells

A specification to define how to insert tables in table cells.

Hans-Peter Burow, Frank Meies

Draft

2.0

09/02/04

Enhanced Table Handling

This specification will relocate and define the behaviour of this icon to a more prominent location as well as introducing an all-new table main menu entry to ease the access to table formatting for users.

Falko Tesch

Final

2.0

16.06.04

Enhanced Word Count

This specification adds enhanced word count feature to OO.org 2.0

Falko Tesch

Final

2.0

2004-04-07

Format Menu

The Format menu in OOo2.0 Writer is no longer context sensitive, i.e. the set of menu commands is fixed for all objects to be edited.

Matthias Müller-Prove

final

2.0

07/08/04

Mail Merge

The Mail Merge functionality will be totally renewed. The user will be assisted by a Merge Wizard. Advanced users will get a Toolbar from where the most needed functions for creating a Merge are accessible. The new Merge will also be much more flexible in managing & editing databases and allows to save into one single file.

Christian Jansen

Final

2.0

04-28-04

Mail Merge

The Mail Merge functionality will be slightly changed due to new facts coming out of usability studies.

Frank Loehmann

Final

2.0.1

09-28-05

Unification of object positioning

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.

Oliver Specht

Final

2.0

04-30-04

New Browser Button to Select a Database from File in Writer.

This new browse button allows to select a database from file.

Frank Loehmann

Final

2.0

05-11-04

Select a Database from File in the Fields-Database dialog.

The Fields-Database dialog has been reworked to add the possibility of selecting database files, which are not connected as a data source.

Frank Loehmann

Final

2.0

05-11-04

Text/Table Selection Enhancement

This specification adds revamps the selection of text and tables in Writer 2.0

Falko Tesch

Final

2.0

27.04.04

Collapsing table borders

This specification adds the collapsing borders model to Writer tables.

Frank Meies

Final

2.0

2004-06-04

Show Space Between Number and Heading Text in Navigator

A chapter numbering and the heading text itself could be separated by a space character, a tabulator or an indent. If the tabulator or indent method is used, the navigator does not show a spacing between the chapter number and the text. This is hard to read for the user.

Frank Loehmann

Office Later

3.0

05-11-04

Consider Paragraph Spacing on Table Borders

OOo 2.0 now considers spacing and indent set for left / right and for above / below paragraphs when calculating the entire spacing to a table's border. Those two sorts of spacing (paragraph and table) are now being added instead of only considering the distance to border set in the table's properties. This new feature improves the Microsoft interoperability and is also set as default for new created Writer documents to improve the export to Microsoft Word format. But this new feature has some side effects for new created documents: Writer automatically assigns paragraph styles "Table heading" and "Table content" to a table's heading and content. Due to paragraph spacing, set in those styles, the spacing between the last paragraph at the end of a cell and the table border is now much bigger than in OO 1.1. Especially single line paragraph content will not be shown vertically centered within the table cell anymore. Therefore the automatically assigned paragraph styles are changed to Default, the spacing is changed and repeated headings feature is turned off.

Frank Loehmann

Draft

2.0

10-13-04

WriterPerfect Filter

The functionality provided by the existing, external libwpd and writerperfect filters should be integrated into the OpenOffice.org 2 build and product.

Michael Meeks

draft

2.0

10-25-04

Suppress Blank Pages

The suppress printing of automatically inserted blank pages option allows users to decide, if they want to have auto generated blank pages printed or not.

The option effects the behavior of OpenOffice.org Writer, the Writer Page Preview, the current print job properties and PDF.

Christian Jansen

Final

2.02

14-12-05













Specifications for OpenOffice.org 2.x

Introduction of an outline level attribute for paragraphs and paragraph styles

Introduce a new paragraph and paragraph style attribute, named ?outline level?, to transform a normal paragraph directly and independently from any certain list style or paragraph style into a heading.

Oliver-Rainer Wittmann

Preliminary

2.x

2006-11-03

Export of soft page breaks

Soft page breaks transports layout inforamtion about page breaks into file format.

Andreas Martens

Preliminary

2.3

2007-07-04

Rework Simple Mail Merge Print Dialog

The simple mail merge dialog is often used to print already present mail merge documents. The new mail merge wizard seems to be overloaded for those existing mail merge documents. The feature to save the mail merge in a single document is not implemented yet for this old dialog. This specification defines how this feature gets integrated into this dialog.

Frank Loehmann

Preliminary

2.3

2007-07-04

Compatibility Options

This specification handles all newly introduced compatibility options in an own section.

Frank Loehmann

Standard

2.3

07-05-07

New Default Table Formatting Behavior

Predefined character formatting inside tables is unwanted by the user as we have learned in OOo 2.0 usability studies. Furthermore the formatting, used in the paragraph were the table has been inserted, is expected to be used in the table as well.

Frank Loehmann

Standard

2.3

04-24-07

Block Selection of Text

The block selection feature adds an additional selection mode to Writer. When this selection mode is active, the text inside a rectangular selection gets multi selected by Writer. This is useful i.e. if an OCRed text has to be further edited.

Frank Loehmann

Standard

2.4

05-15-07

ODF1.1: Use of soft-page-break

The ODF 1.1 allows the export of soft page breaks. A soft page break is a page break that has been inserted by a page oriented processor like Writer at a position where the document itself does not include a page break (e.g. paragraph attribute page break before/after). The soft page break information is for the purposes of consistent page breaks and for proper conversion to digital talking book formats.

Andreas Martens

Preliminary

2.3

07-04-2007

Specifications for OpenOffice.org 2.4

Insert Pagination

Providing a menu command to ease the interaction flow to insert page numbers for Writer documents.

Matthias Müller-Prove

Preliminary

2.4

31-Oct-207

ODF1.1: Printing of hidden text and placeholders.

In current versions OpenOffice.org Writer never prints hidden text. Therefore a new print option is introduced to allow printing of hidden text. Furthermore text placeholders are always printed out today. Therefore another print option is introduced to suppress printing of those placeholders.

Frank Loehmann

Standard

2.4

2007-11-21

Specifications for OpenOffice.org 3.0

Automatic Scrolling Behavior

OpenOffice.org 1.1 does not keep the speed of autoscrolling on a reasonable rate. Users that do drag&drop or extended selections with the mouse easily overshoot the target position. This spec defines the regions where autoscrolling can be initiated and the speed of the scroll action.

Matthias Müller-Prove

draft

3.0

10/10/2003

Direct cross references for headings and numbered paragraphs

Direct cross references allow you to set a reference to a heading or any other numbered item, without defining the reference target before.

Oliver-Rainer Wittmann

Preliminary

3.0

2007-02-16

New position and space attributes for list levels of a list style

Introduce new position and spacing attributes for the list levels of a list style in order to provide a new possibility to specify the position and spacing of the list label and the text lines of the list item itself.

Oliver-Rainer Wittmann

Preliminary

3.0

2008-01-29

Specifications for OpenOffice.org 3.1

Accept or Reject Changes in context menu

Makes it possible to accept and reject tracked changes via context menu.

Oliver Specht

Preliminary

3.1

2008-11-10

Edit and delete hyperlink in context menu

Makes it possible to edit and delete hyperlinks via context menu.

Oliver Specht

Preliminary

3.1

2008-11-25

Introduction of an overline font effect

Introduce a new font effect that draws a line above a selected character or group of characters. The line style and colour may be selected by the user, with the same options available as for the underline font effect.

Martin Whitaker (MTW)

Preliminary

3.1

2008-11-25

Specifications for OpenOffice.org 3.2

Alternative texts for Writer objects

Introduce support for ODF 1.1 title and description attributes of graphical shapes for Writer objects (frames, floating frames, OLE objects and pictures).

Oliver-Rainer Wittmann

Preliminary

3.2

2009-08-12

Specifications for OpenOffice.org 3.x

Introduction of a List Level attribute for paragraph styles

Introduce a new paragraph style attribute, named List Level, to format a normal paragraph as a numbered paragraph with the indicated list level via its paragraph style's attributes. Import Microsoft Word document accurately that contains the list level value in its paragraph styles.

Xuan Gong

Preliminary

3.x

2009-10-19



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