Issue 66305

Sorry, not reproducible. The drawing toolbar is docked at the bottom as default.
 I cannot see any problem as you described it. Do you have any special graphic
card features activated (virtual screen etc.)? Please have a look if this also
happens with a current version 2.0.2 or 2.0.3. Thanks.

OK, good instincts, wg.  Probably should have thought to check my graphics card
settings.

1. This does not occur when I have my second monitor turned off, or when it is
turned on and in landscape mode.
2. This does occur when I have my second monitor turned on and in portrait mode.

I imagine this should drop the priority of the issue, since it is related to a
specific desktop configuration that many may not be using.  I'll let someone
with more experience than I decide what priority it should be.

Consider the following, though:  the behavior of the "curve" palette and the
dropdown at the end of the toolbar is different than for the rest of the
dropdowns, so even if this is tied in to my specific hardware and / or video
card driver, there's something different about those dropdowns that shouldn't be
different.

The reason I believe this happens in portrait and not in landscape:  my main LCD
(on the laptop) is 1600x1200.  The second monitor is 1280x1024.  When I have it
in portrait mode, then, its vertical resolution is 1280, which is 80 pixels
taller than the LCD on my laptop.  I have Impress or Draw maximized on my laptop
LCD, and somehow a select few of those dropdowns end up thinking they have the
extra 80 pixels to play with.

It remains to be seen whether this affects someone only with my specific video
card and drivers, or whether this affects anyone whose extended desktop space
has more vertical pixels than does the primary desktop space.

Here are some hardware specifics, in case it helps:
I'm running this on a Thinkpad T43p 2668H2U, which has a 129MB ATI Mobiliy
FireGL V3200.    Bios (video card) BK-ATI Ver008.020M.042.003.  Driver from ATI,
 1/21/06, version 8.163.1.11.

(should have been 128MB, typo.)

forgot to mention: I installed current 2.02 stable and my previous comment is
based on my experience with that.

I have confirmed that this is related to the physical relationship of the two
monitors, in (Windows XP) Display Properties, Settings Tab.

The part of OO.o that decides whether the dropdowns go down or up seems to take
its cue from the outer bounds of the desktop space, regardless of whether that
space is accessible on the current monitor.

In XP, the default is to align the tops of the monitors in a dual-monitor
configuration, so my desktop on the external monitor extended 80 pixels *below*
the desktop on the laptop LCD.  The part of OO.o that decides the direction of
the dropdowns seems to think it has that extra 80 pixels to play with when it is
maximized on the laptop LCD.  So the dropdowns that are shorter than 80 pixels
were still going down (and getting hidden behind my taskbar), and the ones that
are taller than 80 pixels were going up.

Another workaround, based on this.  In Display Properties, Settings, make sure
that none of your other desktop areas extend below the one that OO.o is
currently residing on.  For example, align all of them at the bottom -- must use
arrow keys for fine adjustment, since XP "helpfully" snaps the tops into
alignment when you get close.  This unfortunately seems necessary to redo (XP's
fault) each time the external monitor is reconnected.  Anyway, this makes all
the dropdowns go in the correct direction.

I believe that it would be in principle possible to fix this behavior in OO.o. 
Whatever decides the directions the dropdowns go would have to keep track of the
available area (minus the taskbar) on the current screen.  Clearly this kind of
information is accessible somehow:  the window manager maximizes OO.o properly
to fill the screen it's on, keeping it from overlapping the taskbar, etc.  Also,
my mouse won't drive off the screen to the bottom no matter how the monitors are
set up. (And as I bet OO.o developers love to hear, MS Office doesn't suffer
from the same problem ;-).)  As I'm not a programmer, though, and I know even
less about how OO.o is put together, I obviously have no idea how much effort it
would take to fix something like this.  To me it seems likely to be a general
thing that would affect all the toolbars in all the OO.o applications.

Reassigned. Please have a look.

cl->af: One for you? or for phillip?

For you or for CD?

Let's see.

Created attachment 54228 [details]
Screenshot of this bug

screenshot BadDropdownToolbar.PNG is from version 2.4.0 localized to Russian.

2-monitor system with Windows XP, "primary" small monitor at right side,
"secondary" big monitor at left side. Taskbar and Open office now at the left
monitor.

Fixed summary: "pallette" -> "palette".

Reset assignee on issues not touched by assignee in more than 2000 days.