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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: [odf-discuss] Non-portable paragraph rendering settings,
From:       David Faure <faure () kde ! org>
Date:       2006-05-18 21:45:03
Message-ID: 200605182345.04218.faure () kde ! org
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On Thursday 18 May 2006 23:00, Stefan Lücking wrote:
> In OpenOffice 2 the default has changed to the behavior of Microsoft
> Word, i.e. use the sum of both margins.

In KWord it has always been the sum.

> From my point of view the original behavior, i.e. to take the
> maximum of both margins, is far more convenient, specially if you
> use styles.

Yes, for some advanced users it is indeed.
But for most people it's confusing if you change a margin and nothing happens
because the ma xis unchanged...

> Take for example headings: Heading 1 has a top margin of two lines
> and a bottom margin of 1 line, Heading 2 has 1 line on top and no
> bottom margin. What happens if a Heading 2 follows a Heading 1:
> in the first case (using the maximum space) you have a space of one
> line between both headings,
> in the second case (summing up both margins) you have a space of two
> lines, or to avoid this you have to create an extra style for
> Headings 2 following Heading 1 (which is a normal practice in
> Microsoft Word).
Hmm, but what's so wrong with two lines spacing?

> ad (2) vertical margins at the top of a page
> 
> As vertical margins serve to structure a text they are redundant at
> the top of a page. In professional books the first line begins
> always at the very top of the page, even if it is a heading that
> normally has a space above.

Right, KWord removes spacing before a paragraph that is at the top of a page.
This was done because of http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57555 even
though I recently noticed that OOo and Word don't do it by default ;)
But I haven't changed KWord, so it still removes top margins for top-of-page parags.

> My colleagues who work with Microsoft Word have always difficulties
> to find the option to make Word ignore vertical margins at the top
> of a page. There is an option but very hidden.
Ah.

> The only case where an additional vertical space at the top of a
> page makes sense is at the beginning of chapter, that always start
> with a new page  and this page should differ from other pages to
> make it easier to find the start of a new chapter.
Hmm, and then how do you do that in those office suites (OOo/MSWord)
where the option is global and not per paragraph?

> In KWord it?s completely viceversa. The top margin of a paragraph
> style is only ignored when the option "Page break before" is used.
Hmm, and for the very first paragraph... It is ignored for any paragraph
that is being put at the top of a page, that's the intent.

> Therefore if you define a style for chapter headings that always are
> at the top of a page, you cannot assign an additional top margin
> for the space, while normal headings that have a top margin to
> separate them from the previous paragraph, they retain this margin
> also on top of a page, although they are already separated form the
> previous paragraph be the page break.
Ah... you mean that when the normal text flow makes a paragraph first
in a page, we don't remove the margin... that would be a bug.

> In OpenOffice normally paragraph top margins are ignored on top of a page.
They are? I tested in 2.0.1 recently and it wasn't - see the testcase at the above url.

> In KWord the right behavior (from my point of view) could be
> realized when paragraph top margins are ignored on of a page unless
> it is combined with the option "Page break before".
Why? "Page break before" leads to a paragraph on top of a page, which
is exactly where there shouldn't be a useless top margin, isn't it?
That's exactly what the #57555 fix was... no top margin on very first
paragraph and any paragraph that is being "moved" to the top of the
next page, either due to "page break before" or due to not enough space
for the paragraph on the page before. [But I see how this means that 
it is not ignored in the case where the paragraph just falls into place
at the top of a page, without any need to "move it down there"].

> But to be compatible with OpenOffice the only solution is to offer
> an option to choose between these two behaviors.
I don't like that since most people wouldn't even understand the question...
or know about where to find such an option. Before working on a word
processor I would have never guessed that office suites might make this
kind of stuff configurable.

> But even then you have to answer the question which behavior should
> be the default.
I think "adding top+bottom margins" is a good default since it prevents
the non-user-friendly surprise of "I change the margin and nothing happens".

But for top of page, I merely did it to fix #57555, and then realized the BR
was wrong since my MSWord and my OOo both obey top-margin - I tested with
the very first paragraph of the document.

> I write this because the the actual behavior of KWord regarding
> paragraph top and bottom margins, is one reason the prevents my to
> use KWord more often.

OK if it's that bad then maybe it needs to be configurable after all :-} Damn...

> I hope these reflections on the sense of vertical paragraph margins
> help you to decide how to solve these issues in KWord 2.

I'm pretty much undecided still ;-)

-- 
David Faure, faure@kde.org, sponsored by Trolltech to work on KDE,
Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org), and KOffice (http://www.koffice.org).
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