Issue 121102

Summary:	UX Design Exploration - Document page boundary
Product:	ui	Reporter:	Kevin Grignon <kevingrignon.oo>
Component:	ui	Assignee:	AOO issues mailing list <issues>
Status:	UNCONFIRMED ---	QA Contact:
Severity:	Normal
Priority:	P3	CC:	arielch, Armin.Le.Grand, glgxg, issues, pescetti, rb.henschel
Version:	AOO 3.4.1	Keywords:	usability
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	All
Issue Type:	TASK	Latest Confirmation in:	---
Developer Difficulty:	---

Description Kevin Grignon 2012-09-26 06:13:48 UTC

The page boundary does not add value to the document editing experience. To reduce visual noise, and help the uesr focus on their content, please remove the page boundary all together, or implement the Symphony approach of page boundary corners only.

Comment 1 Kevin Grignon 2012-09-26 06:15:26 UTC

kg.oo_workitem

Comment 2 Regina Henschel 2012-09-26 07:16:21 UTC

Please notice the discussion in LibreOffice. They had removed the text boundaries and got a lot of complaints. Current state there is, to show the complete text boundaries, when "show non-printing characters" is on, and show corner marks, when it is off.
See https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46073 and its duplicates and the discussion on mailing list and in forum.

I personally want to see the complete boundaries every-time and would not like, when AOO removes them.

Comment 3 Andrea Pescetti 2012-09-26 07:20:15 UTC

Yes, this is a controversial issue that should be discussed better on the mailing list before any code is written.

Comment 4 Armin Le Grand 2012-09-26 08:50:51 UTC

ALG: Adding myself to CC.

Comment 5 Ariel Constenla-Haile 2012-09-26 11:21:25 UTC

+1 to discussing this issue in public, ideally starting on the user's mailing list.

There was some early advice from a user not to follow this controversial path, taking LO users reaction into account; please see http://markmail.org/message/sotmot7ktxm6kvlh

Personally, I too think that the default should be to leave it as it is.

Comment 6 Kevin Grignon 2012-09-27 13:41:09 UTC

I've read the LibreOffice threads and have a better understanding of the issues and concerns.

I still maintain my original UX feedback that the page frame adds noise. In addition, the current stroke color is rather dark, and can make it difficult to see the text location indicator, perhaps we could work on the contrast.

As for a solution, I feel that we could we could provide display preferences for no frame, corners only (a la Symphony), or full frame. Heck the user could even select the stroke colour if so desired.

To support smart object layout when the page frame is not in full frame mode, we could display the frame on demand, when an object being positioned comes in contact with the frame. More broadly, we need smart guides for all possible intersections.

I'll move the discussion to the mailing list.

Comment 7 Ariel Constenla-Haile 2012-09-27 13:59:42 UTC

(In reply to comment #6)k on the contrast.
> Heck the user  could even select the stroke colour if so desired.

This is already possible: Tools - Options - OpenOffice.org - Appearance - General - Text boundaries

Comment 8 Kevin Grignon 2012-09-27 14:31:44 UTC

Great, less work.