[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: [odf-discuss] Non-portable paragraph rendering settings,
From:       Stefan =?iso-8859-1?q?L=FCcking?= <stefan () stefanluecking ! de>
Date:       2006-05-19 6:59:56
Message-ID: 200605190859.56357.stefan () stefanluecking ! de
[Download RAW message or body]

Am Donnerstag, 18. Mai 2006 23:45 schrieb David Faure:
> 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...

OK is see this problem, but in the end that means, you don't want to 
have advanced users.

Summing up vertical margins may be OK when you don't use styles, but 
as soon as you use styles, you run into trouble. In my experience 
with summing up vertical margins you have to consider more special 
cases and, therefore, to define more styles.

And it's more difficult to write easy to use templates for 
professional looking reports or books, where "easy to use" means 
the lowest number of styles possible, and "professional looking" 
means regarding the rules of professional type setting as far as 
possible.

Take the heading example.

> > 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?

The two line spacing would be wrong because the space above a 
heading should be larger than below. In this case Heading 1 would 
have two lines above and below.


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

This has changed in OOo 2 in order to become more like Microsoft 
Word. In OOo 1.X the default was to ignore the space above a 
paragraph on top of a page.

> Hmm, and then how do you do that in those office suites
> (OOo/MSWord) where the option is global and not per paragraph?

Oh, my fault. I think in Microsoft Word it is indeed an option 
related to the paragraph, not to the whole document, but I am not 
very firm in MS Word. So, I don't know exactly where you can find 
this option.

> 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.

That is exactly what I meant.

> > 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.

It has changed in OOo 2 in order to adpot to MS Word behavior. But I 
think the aim shouldn't be to became like MS Word at all costs.

> > 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.

You're right.

I only wanted to say that the only case where it would make sense 
not to ignore the above paragraph margin on the top of a page would 
be paragraphs that always start with a new page. But this is only 
true for chapter headings. So forget what i wrote before.

> 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".

This is an argument.

But you can get accustomed to the other behavior, too.

You should also consider the question which behavior makes it easier 
to regard typographical conventions with a small set of predefined 
styles. If you can do this with the behavior of summing up margins 
that would be OK.

As a scholar nowadays you have to typeset your books your self. And 
some publishers still have very clear specifications how you should 
do this. And for me the default behavior of OOo 1.X to use only the 
maximum of two adkoining vertical margins made it far more easier 
to accomplish these specifications.

Stefan

-- 
Stefan Lücking

Telefon:  +49-89-14729382
Büro:     +49-89-289-24233
E-Mail:   stefan@stefanluecking.de
_______________________________________________
koffice-devel mailing list
koffice-devel@kde.org
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/koffice-devel

[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]