Calc Cell Property “Fill Cell”

OpenOffice.org 2.0

Document - ID	Specification Owner	Last Change	Status
	Daniel Rentz	2004-05-28	Final
Conforms to	StarOffice Specification Workflow v0.1, Aug 2003
Applies to	Calc, API
Task ID(s)	i22926, i22927, i22928, i22928, i22929, i22930
Category	Feature

Abstract

To increase compatibility to Microsoft Excel, Calc needs the new cell property “Fill Cell”. It will repeat the cell contents until the cell is completely filled.

This specification will define how Calc will implement this feature.

i-Team Members

	Name	E-mail Address
Specification Owner	Daniel Rentz (dr)	daniel.rentz@sun.com
User Experience	Falko Tesch (ft)	falko@sun.com
Development	Daniel Rentz (dr)	daniel.rentz@sun.com
Quality Assurance	Oliver Crämer (oc)	oliver.craemer@sun.com
Documentation	Uwe Fischer (ufi)	uwe.fischer@sun.com

Approved for Implementation

	Approved by	Date
User Experience	Falko Tesch	2003-12-16
Development	Daniel Rentz	2003-11-27
Quality Assurance	Oliver Crämer	2003-12-18
Documentation	Uwe Fischer	2004-05-28
String Review	Elizabeth Matthis	2004-02-12

Document Change History

Rev. Level	Change	Initials	Date
1.0	Initial version	dr	2003-11-27
1.1	First UE review	ft/dr	2003-12-04
1.2	Second UE review, QA review	oc/dr	2003-12-18
1.3	String review	em	2004-02-12
1.4	Added details about functionality	ufi/dr	2004-05-24

Contents

Abstract	1

i-Team Members	1

Approved for Implementation	1

Document Change History	1

Glossary	1

1	Motivation	1

2	Goals	1

3	Requirements and Dependencies	1

3.1	Requirements	1

3.2	Technical Dependencies	1

4	User Scenarios	1

5	Competitive Analyses	1

6	Detailed Specification	1

Functionality	1

User Interface	2

String list	2

Tab Order	3

Key Board Shortcuts	3

6.1	Error Conditions	3

7	Future Tasks	3

8	Legal Issues	3

9	Notes	3

10	References	3

Glossary

Term	Description
Horizontal Cell Alignment	Spreadsheet cell property that controls the horizontal position of the cell contents, i.e. left aligned or centered.

Motivation

Enhancing Ease-of-Use as well as easing the learning curve for MS Excel users and enhancing the user's abilities to use their MS Excel documents.

Goals

Interoperability with MS Excel documents.

Ease-of-Use with Excel. It is mandatory that the users finds a comparable interface within the same interface structure as in Excel.

Consistency. Although this feature should be Excel-user compatible it must fit seamlessly into the existing Calc user interface and naming conventions/glossary.

Requirements and Dependencies

Requirements

This feature will allow users to easily adopt their skills on working with MS Excel spreadsheets to migrate to Calc.

Technical Dependencies

None.

User Scenarios

A user who migrates from Excel to Calc might be used to format his cells this way and will not find this feature in Calc. This will raise the reluctance to switch and adopt Calc in his day-to-day work.

Competitive Analyses

See chapter 6 “Detailed Specification“.

Detailed Specification

Functionality

The new property “Fill Cell” is a horizontal cell alignment (see glossary). If selected, the cell contents (numbers or text) will be repeated until the visible area of the cell is filled, according to the current cell width and text formatting (i.e. font size). This will only work for single line cell contents. Text containing line breaks is not affected by this setting and will behave like “Standard” alignment. It will not be possible to combine the “Fill Cell” setting with rotated or stacked cell contents, or with the new “Shrink To Fit Cell Size” cell attribute . If “Fill Cell” is selected, cells will always be shown unrotated, but they remember their rotation settings, i.e. for the case that “Fill Cell” is switched off.

If applied, this cell formatting attribute will repeat existing cell contents. It will react dynamically on changes of the cell contents or the size of the cell. If the cell contents change (i.e. user input or formula result), the new contents will be shown repeated. If the column width is changed, or the cell is merged with another cell, the contents are shown according to the new width of the cell.

User Interface

A new entry “Fill” will be added to the list box “Horizontal” in the “Format – Cell – Alignment” tab page.

Illustration 1: The new entry in the “Horizontal” list box of the “Format – Cells – Alignment” tab page If the entry is selected, all controls in the section “Text direction” below (“Stacked”, “Rotation”, “Reference edge”, “Asian vertical layout mode”) will be disabled, and additionally the new check box “Shrink to fit cell size”, that will be added by another feature implementation, as mentioned above1.

String list

Item	English	German	Comments
“Format – Cell – Alignment” tab page; “Horizontal” list box	Filled	Ausgefüllt	Adjective according to “Justified”

Tab Order

No change of tab order.

Key Board Shortcuts

No new shortcuts added.

Error Conditions

None.

Future Tasks

None.

Legal Issues

None.

Notes

None.

References

OpenOffice.org issue: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=22926

PCD-ID: MSInteroperability-8

see http://specs.openoffice.org/calc/compatibility/shrinktofit.sxw

Calc Cell Property “Fill Cell”

Page 3

http://specs.openoffice.org/calc/compatibility/fillcell.sxw

Calc Cell Property "Fill Cell"

Daniel Rentz

2003-09-24T12:39:05

Matthias Müller-Prove