Negative positions for Writer fly frames

MS-Interoperability

Document - ID	Specification Owner	Last Change	Status
	Oliver-Rainer Düsterhöft	11/19/2003	Final
Conforms to	
Applies to	OpenOffice Writer
Task ID(s)	IssueZilla task 17567
Category	Feature

Abstract

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

i-Team Members

	Name	E-mail Address
Specification Owner	Oliver-Rainer Düsterhöft (OD)	oliver-rainer.duesterhoeft@sun.com
User Experience	Falko Tesch (FT)	falko@sun.com
Development	Oliver-Rainer Düsterhöft (OD)	oliver-rainer.duesterhoeft@sun.com
Quality Assurance	Michael Rüß (MRU)	michael.ruess@sun.com
Documentation	Uwe Fischer (UFI)	uwe.fischer@sun.com

Approved for Implementation

	Approved by	Date
User Experience	Falko Tesch	11/07/2003
Development	Michael Brauer	11/18/2003
Quality Assurance	Stefan Baltzer	11/14/2003
Documentation	Uwe Fischer	11/06/2003
String Review	- no new strings -	

Document Change History

Rev. Level	Change	Initials	Date
1.0	Initial version	OD	10/14/2003
1.1	Including FT's adjustments	OD	11/06/2003
1.2	Add FT's approval	OD	11/07/2003
1.3	Add clarification that no impact on the file format and the API exists; Add MIB's approval	OD	11/19/2003

Contents

Glossary	1

1	Motivation	1

2	User Scenarios	1

3	Goals	2

4	Requirements and Dependencies	2

4.1	Requirements	2

4.2	Technical Dependencies	2

5	Competitive Analyses	2

6	Detailed Specification	2

6.1	Error Conditions	3

7	Future Tasks	3

8	Legal Issues	4

9	Notes	4

10	References	4

Glossary

Term	Description
floating screen object	This term denotes the objects 'Writer fly frame' and 'drawing object' in Writer and the objects 'text box', 'graphic', 'frame', 'picture' etc. in MS Word.
Writer fly frame	Floating screen object containing normal Writer content (text, tables, sections, columns, etc.), graphics, or OLE content.
drawing object	Floating screen object known for the draw application – e.g. rectangles, circles, lines, arrows, etc.
anchor [of a floating screen object]	Content the floating screen object is connected to. In Writer this could be a paragraph, a character, a page, or a Writer fly frame. In MS Word this is always a character.
layout environment [given by an anchor]	Surrounding environment the anchor is in. If the anchor is a paragraph or a character this could be the document body, a table cell, a footnote/endnote, the page header/footer, or a Writer fly frame. If the anchor is a page or a Writer fly frame, its the page respectively the Writer fly frame.

Motivation

MS Word and Writer have different approaches on anchoring and positioning objects in documents. To enhance interoperability in between these products as well as to lower the threshold for users to migrate to Writer it is mandatory to adapt certain behaviour from Word and integrate them into Writer. Allowing negative positions for Writer fly frames addresses one of these differences.

User Scenarios

Scenario 1

Interoperability: A user gets a Word document and opens it within Writer. The person who designed the Word document made heavy use of objects of any kind in his text.

Thus the layout of the Word document relies heavily on the precise interpretation of position of the inserted objects.

If the to-be-imported document contains objects which are negative positioned the layout in the Writer currently doesn't reflect this.

Once this specification is implemented the user will have less layout loss in this case when importing and if course exporting the document into/from Writer.

Scenario 2:

Migration: A user who is used to work with MS Word will only know how to position objects in text documents but will for the beginning at least hardly know anything about anchoring (which is heavily used in Writer). Therefore this user will at the beginning try to insert and position objects in his Writer documents the way MS Word allows.

To accomplish and to ease such transition this specification will enhance the usability for such migrating users by offering similar positioning features in Writer (w/o EOL existing ones).

Goals

Implement the general possibility to allow negative positions for Writer fly frames to improve the interoperability of the Writer to MS Word. Implementations which consider the wrapping in the area above the anchor and allow leaving the layout environment given by its anchor have to follow to complete the interoperability for negative positioned objects.

Requirements and Dependencies

Requirements

None.

Technical Dependencies

Not known.

Competitive Analyses

The competitive analyses will consider MS Word only since this specification is about MS interoperability. Since the Detailed Specification is based on a direct comparison that needs to be implemented, a competitive analyses is not needed.

Detailed Specification

In MS Word floating screen objects can be vertical positioned above its anchor. This is implemented by a corresponding negative value in the absolute vertical position.

This will be introduced in Writer for 'to character' and 'to paragraph' anchored Writer fly frame has an enhancement. But considering the wrapping mode in the area above its anchor and leaving the layout environment given by its anchor will be specified and implemented later.

Illustration 1 Type tab page with negative value entered

No adjustments in the MS Word import filter has to be done, because the negative positions are already imported. It exists no impact on the file format and the API.

Error Conditions

Not Known.

Future Tasks

In order to improve the interoperability for negative positioned MS Word floating screen objects completely, the following adjustments have to be specified and implemented:

Considering the wrapping mode of a floating screen object in the area above its anchor. This needs some re-work in the layout engine to avoid loops causes by the intrinsic defined loop-dependence for negative positioned floating screen objects.

Allow leaving of the layout environment given by the anchor of a floating screen object. This needs a new option for the floating screen objects to control, if the floating screen object should follow the text flow or leave its given layout environment.

Layout algorithm for floating screen objects as MS Word applies it to its floating screen objects for imported documents. MS Word seems to calculate a position of a floating screen object as it has the wrapping mode 'wrap through' set without reflecting of a changed anchor position by a negative positioned floating screen object. For this a fully understanding of MS Word layout algorithm and a compatibility flag is needed.

Legal Issues

Not known.

Notes

References

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.

Negative positions for Writer fly frames

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Oliver-Rainer Düsterhöft

2003-10-14T11:10:20