R2L-enabled Control Forms

OpenOffice.org 2.0

Document - ID	Specification Owner	Last Change	Status
	Falko Tesch	04.02.04	Draft
Conforms to	
Applies to	OpenOffice.org
Task ID(s)	30361
Category	Feature

Abstract

In regions where people uses right-to-left directed text like Arabia or Israel (Hebrew) forms will look strange if they need to use left-to-right layout control forms.

This specification will enhance OpenOffice.org 2.0 with control forms that can have both text directions/layout - left-to-right and right-to-left.

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

	Name	E-mail Address
User Experience	Falko Tesch, FT	Ft@openoffice.org
Development (UI)	Frank Schönheit, FS	Fs@openoffice.org
Development (Core)	Malte Timmermann, MT	Mt@openoffice.org
Quality Assurance	Waleed Hosny	Waleed.hosny@sun.com
Documentation	Uwe Fischer	Ufi@openoffice.org

Approved for Implementation

	Approved by	Date
User Experience	Falko Tesch	20.07.04
Development	Frank Schönheit, FS	20.07.04
Development	Malte Timmermann, MT	20.07.04
Quality Assurance	Waleed Hosny	20.07.04
Documentation	Uwe Fischer	20.07.04
String Review	Falko Tesch	22.07.04

Document Change History

Rev. Level	Change	Initials	Date
1.0	Initial release	FT	04.02.04
1.1	Final Changes	FT	17.07.2004

Contents

Glossary	1

1	Motivation	1

2	User Scenarios	1

3	Goals	1

4	Requirements and Dependencies	1

4.1	Requirements	1

4.2	Technical Dependencies	1

5	Competitive Analyses	1

6	Detailed Specification	1

6.1	Error Conditions	2

7	Future Tasks	2

8	Legal Issues	2

9	Notes	2

10	References	2

Glossary

Term	Description
R2L	Right-to-left, synonym for text direction used in Arabic, Hebrew and Urdu
L2R	Left-to-right, synonym for Western text direction
Control Forms or Forms	Form functions offer, for example, text fields where a user can enter text or buttons that initiate a certain action. These form functions are called Controls in StarOffice.

Motivation

In regions where people uses right-to-left directed text like Arabia or Israel (Hebrew) forms will look strange if they need to use left-to-right layout control forms.

User Scenarios

Users that need to create forms for regions where people are used to R2L writing and reading will obscure their clients by creating forms with R2L content (text, tables, frames, sheets, etc.) but with L2R layout form controls.

Goals

OpenOffice.org must be able to create and set dorm controls for both text directions – L2R and R2L. Also the initial defaults for those objects must be defined in a logical way that does not obscure “old” users (who only know L2R form controls).

Requirements and Dependencies

Requirements

N/a

Technical Dependencies

none

Competitive Analyses

MS Office

The only product currently known and available to the author that is capable of R2L forms is MS Office 2002/XP.

MS Excel will adjust the forms direction based on the setting of the underlying sheet. If the sheet is R2L layout all forms will follow and use this direction, too. Once the sheet changes its direction to L2R all controls again will follow.

OpenOffice.org 1.1.0

Forms in OpenOffice.org currently plainly follow the direction of the UI.

In case the UI of OpenOffice.org is R2L (e.g. localized Arabic version of OO.o) all documents and spreadsheets that contain forms will present them in R2L UI-design.

Nevertheless the content (text) is not affected by this change. It will always stay L2R.

Detailed Specification

Main Concept

The main requirement for this feature was to find a different, more individual approach than MS Office, for this issue.

In OpenOffice.org all forms share the same core and UI thus all changes in this speciifcation will be available within all OpenOffice.org 2.0 modules that support forms.

To allow forms to change their direction a new flag/item has to be introduced – on the core-side as well as on the UI.

This new setting will determine how the forms

will look and

content (text) will set its direction

Setting the direction of a control will therefore change its appearance as well as its content (text) direction.

Default Behaviour

The control will, as a default, always follow the superordinate text direction setting from the objects it is anchored to.

So inserting a control to a L2R layout paragraph or cell will inherit its text directions from them.

A change of text direction of the superordinate anchored object will also result in an equivalent change of text direction for the forms and its content.

If the attribute is changed from “Use superordinnate setting” to “Right-to-left” or “Left-to-right” the control will adjust accordingly and will stay regardless of its environment this way.

Default is Use superordinate object settings

Effects of Feature

A forms that changes its direction will

mirror its appearance (like R2L UI)

change the content direction. The changed text direction will behave the same as changing the text direction of a paragraph.

Environmental Conditions

The setting “Text direction....” will be located as the 3rd entry underneath “Label field.....” within the “Format – Control -> Properties: [forms name]” dialogue.
Note: This dialogue is only available when a form is selected.

This setting “Text direction....” will only be available when “Tools – Options – Language Settings – Languages” “Complex Text Layout (CTL) support” is enabled.

In case a document with “Text direction”-enhanced forms is opened in

OpenOffice.org 2.0 or higher with no CTL support enabled, than all forms will keep their text direction and behave according to 6.2 Default Behaviour, but the user will not presented by an UI to change the settings

OpenOffice.org 1.1.1 or lower with no support for text directional forms the new setting/item will be ignored and dropped. This will leave all forms to be changed back to standard layout as described in Competitive Analysis: 5.2 OpenOffice.org 1.1.0. Saving the document with this version(s) of OpenOffice.org will lead to a loss of any user set attributes and re-opening the document in OpenOffice.org 2.0 will have all controls set back to default.

MockUp

Figure 1 New item/setting for forms

String list

Item	English	German	Comments
Button	Text direction	Textfluss	
Entry #1	Use superordinate object settings	Einstellungen des übergeordneten Objektes verwenden	
Entry #2	Left-to-right	Links-nach-rechts	
Entry #3	Right-to-left	Rechts-nach-links	

Tab Order

No change

Key Board Shortcuts

n/a

Error Conditions

N/a

Future Tasks

It makes sense to add a sperate text direction to forms' content to allows different text directions for the form itself and its content.

Such issue must be taken in consideration once the formatting of text in forms is to be implemented.

Notes

empty

References

empty

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.

R2L-enabled Control Forms

Page 5

Http://specs.openoffice.org/g11n//Right-to-left_control_forms/R2L-enabled_control_forms.sxw

R2L-enabled Control Forms

Falko Tesch

2004-02-04T11:03:22