Hello Kevin,
First of all a clarification: I really enjoy using OOo both at home and
whenever I can get away with it in the office, but I think that some
constructive criticism is OK and there are areas where OOo can
definitely improve. I think it would not be right to pretend that OOo is
perfect.
[snip]
What I want from my writing tool is pretty basic:
- ability to place graphic thingies in the background (like
watermarks and page backgrounds) such that they don't
interfere in any way with ongoing editing and writing.
This is something that can be easily done and work quite well.
- ability to place graphic thingies in the foreground
(like illustrations and screen-caps and icons for
notices and warnings), such that they stay with the
text that needs 'em, regardless how that text gets
pushed around the document.
Graphic thingies should not place themselves arbitrarily,
just because something has moved nearby. They should not
arbitrarily decide to begin overlapping other graphic
items or overlapping table cells or overlapping page text
margins (when they're anchored to paragraphs or characters
within the text).
I would agree with it, on the overlapping. As for the staying with the
text I think OOo does a decent job given the tools available.
It shouldn't matter to any of this whether the document
was originated in OOo, or whether it came from (say)
Word. The rules for handling attached/embedded graphic
items should be consistent.
If Microsoft has done something ambiguous or silly -
or allowed it to be done - in a Word document, then
OOo does not need to be silly or ambiguous when importing
such a document. If there is any question, then present
the problem to the user in a dialog "We just encountered
this situation while importing this document and this
particular picture. How do you wish to handle it?"
"Same for all similar pictures/drawings that we encounter
during this import?"
... I understood that the binary format of the MS files makes the
anchoring of the document a rather wild guess when the document is
imported to OOo (and vice-versa). Hopefully if MS really implements
their own ISO standard (of which I doubt) then the situation can only
improve. I think that an interactive process for importing MS documents,
on top of the already configurable options is an excellent idea, though
I wonder if "normal" users would be confused by it.
Cheers,
Michele
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