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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Thoughts about the "Open document" dialog
From:       David Faure <david () mandrakesoft ! com>
Date:       2002-01-13 11:46:17
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On Sunday 13 January 2002 08:46, Clarence Dang wrote:
> 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.

Excellent idea, patch welcome ;)

> 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".
Yes, this often happens due to keywords in the file. Thanks for saying so, 
some people here wanted to make everything rely on the "magic".
Hmm, however I'm always happy to fix KMimeMagic, so I'll have a look at that 
one.

> 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.

Hmm, this means we should be able to associate the ASCII filter with
"text/*". The kio_thumbnail kioslave supports such a construct (e.g. image/*),
this should be rather easy to do in KOffice too.

> 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".

Hmm, the logic behind this might not appear to the user.
"I have All Files and All Supported Files - what good is it to choose a file 
that isn't supported ?"

> 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.

Werner ? Can we add a connected.sort() at the end of 
KoFilterManager::mimeFilter, or is there some code that relies on the order 
of this list ?

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

That's probably due to the two mimetype namings for those type of files.
Werner: if ( !connected.contains( t ) ) connected.append( t ) ? ;)

> 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...

Yes - patch welcome :)

> 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?

Errr. mv blah.html blah.txt ? ;-)
Or a way to manually ask for the dialog you'll implement for 1) ;)
(for instance a checkbox in the "Open document" dialog (more commonly know as 
KoTemplateChooseDialog))

-- 
David FAURE, david@mandrakesoft.com, faure@kde.org
http://people.mandrakesoft.com/~david, http://www.konqueror.org
KDE 3.0: Konquering the Desktops

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