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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Thoughts about the "Open document" dialog
From:       Clarence Dang <CTRL_CD () bigpond ! com>
Date:       2002-01-13 7:46:39
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Hi,

I have some ideas to do with the "Open document" dialog and filters...

1. If I try to open a document, that KWord doesn't detect as one of the 
supported file types, then KWord will silently ignore it (to the confusion of 
the user), pop up an error message or crash.  This has always been happening 
AFAIK :(

What I propose is that if KWord can't detect the file type or find an 
appropriate filter, then it should pop up a dialog, like it does in 
StarOffice, asking the user to select a particular filter.

This is important because KDE doesn't always detect file types properly 
(magic numbers don't always work).
e.g. I have a text document (koffice/filters/kword/mswrite/IMPERFECT) and KDE 
detects it as "Java sources".

Further, sometimes it isn't obvious to KWord that an appropriate import 
filter exists e.g. KWord can't open *.c *.cc *.h etc. files at the moment 
despite the fact that the ASCII filter would be perfect.

2. Because of the previous point, the Filter drop-down-list-box (whatever 
it's called :)), should not only have "All supported files", but it should 
also have "All files" (to reveal those files that _could_ be opened).  And 
"All supported files" should probably be renamed to "All known supported 
files".

3. I'm very pleased to see the large number of import filters that the user 
can choose from.  But the problem with this is that, with so many filters, 
the user will spend too long trying to find the appropriate filter :(  Maybe 
they should be organised alphabetically or in order of frequency of use.

4. Why does the dialog have two "Microsoft Word document "'s and two 
"Microsoft Excel spreadsheet"'s?  Really, those formats aren't that popular 
:) :) :)

5. Sort of OT, but there should really be an option to start any of the 
Office applications with a blank document, instead of popping up that 
"Choose" dialog box that has three options (with the command line option "-n" 
or "--newdoc" perhaps?).  MsWord has this feature...

6. When opening a HTML file, usually the user wants the HTML import filter to 
be invoked (which is what happens).  But what if the user wanted to edit the 
HTML directly, using the ASCII import filter?

These are just my ideas so please criticise and implement :) them.

Thanks!
Clarence

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