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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: [odf-discuss] Non-portable paragraph rendering settings,
From:       Martin Ellis <martin.ellis () kdemail ! net>
Date:       2006-05-18 21:46:57
Message-ID: 200605182246.57754.martin.ellis () kdemail ! net
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On Thursday 18 May 2006 22:00, Stefan Lücking wrote:
> There are two different issues concerning vertical paragraph
> margins:

At least two.  Looking at those API docs I pointed out, I wonder if 
there aren't more issues lurking....

> The default behavior of OpenOffice 1.X for adjoining vertical

Yes, we've checked the behaviours.  It seems those options are 
specifically there in order to render legacy documents correctly.

> 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.

The problem with this approach is that it makes the paragraph spacing 
dialog rather unintuitive when you modify the smaller margin, and it 
has no visible effect on the document.

But, we've also considered the use-case you described, where using the 
maximum is useful, too.  Hmm...

> ad (2) vertical margins at the top of a page

> In KWord it?s completely viceversa. The top margin of a paragraph
> style is only ignored when the option "Page break before" is used.

As I explained on the ODF list, the unusual behaviour is, in part, due 
to a bug report that asserted that MS Word had the current behaviour. 
We've only discovered otherwise in the last few days. 

The behaviour may change: but that doesn't affect the fundamental 
problem of how to ensure compatibility across applications with a 
specification that admits different behvaiours, nor how to deal with 
legacy documents if extra attributes to distinguish between the 
behaviours are added to the file format.

> For compatibility reasons there is also the option to change this
> behavior (on the same place in the GUI).

Yes, found this... eventually.

> But to be compatible with OpenOffice the only solution is to offer
> an option to choose between these two behaviors.

Yes, though this is only really a partial solution, at least for 
the 'vertical collapsing' problem, we'd need somewhere in the format 
to store that option.

One approach is that the specification be amended to support these 
attributes.  Making ODF applications read the existing OO.o specific 
options rather defeats the purpose of a vendor-neutral standard.

Either way, the current behaviour in OO.o is terrible IMO:

Firsly, the behaviour of the paragraph format dialog box depends on 
some options buried deep in a configuration menu.  Secondly, it 
doesn't make a great deal of sense for these to be document level 
options.

(Again, IMO) by adding these options to each paragraph style, we could 
have a better solution in both OO.o and KWord.

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

Hmm.  I think some of these issues need to be addressed in the ODF 
specification, before we can resolve them in KOffice. :o)

Martin

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