Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 15395
add bulb-help for saving "last printed" status upon closing after printing
Last modified: 2005-02-01 13:18:01 UTC
The default installation of OOo has the "printing sets document modified status" set to true. This is unintuitive. I think that most users would feel that printing a document does not change its modification status. We already have had six bugs opened concerning this problem: bug 3068, bug 3647, bug 6653, bug 7955, bug 9868, and bug 15346 This problem could be easily fixed by changing the default value of this option to false as the default installation value. This option can be set in the gui under Options -> OOo -> General, but as attested by the numerous bugs filed, people don't seem to be discovering it. (Me included.)
(Tweaking summary line to make it more readable.)
just my opinion as an user: These dupes are filed because users that switch to OOo after using MS-Office just are not used to this behaviour and therefore regard this feature as a defect. I think there are many more users that like the behaviour (former StarOffice users, users who are used to this). Another possibility to solve this "problem" would be to add a bulb-tip (the symbol with a light bulb that appears when some auto-correction happens or when a document is saved) when printing to explain that printing changes the "last-printed-information" and that this behaviour can be turned off. These bulb-help (don't know the official name - it's the equivalent to "help-Agent" in StarOffice 5.x) appears for some seconds in the lower right corner of the screen and then disappears. If the user doesn't click on it nothing happens (the window doesn't even get the focus). When this help is ignored for a few times, it won't reappear again for that particular action. I'd like to have this solution instead of changing a default that is established for a long time already... but anyway - confirming. If you (reporter) like my proposal as well, feel free to change the subject accordingly) PS: thanks for finding those dupes... (issue 3647 is different though)
I think that the current default is unintuitive, because few users are aware that a "last printed" value is saved as document meta-info. (I didn't know about it until now.) I've never been a Word user, so it's not only Word users who come across this. I have never used another word processor that had this behavior. (One's i've used are WordPerfect and KWord.) To the person who doesn't know that "last printed" is saved as a property, this just looks like a bug. However, since the behavior isn't really a bug (since the printing status is saved), i would tend to agree with your solution of a bulb-help. The question is when and how the tip will display. Since we get the save dialog just before the document window closes, the bulb-help won't be accessible once the document has been saved. I am changing the summary line to conform to you suggestion.
TM->BH: Please have a look, thanks !
On OOo 1.1rc2, I have disabled the option Printing sets "document modified" status but, despite this setting, the document status gets modified if I print on a printer that is not the "Generic Printer". This seems to be a rather different problem, should I open another issue for this? Marco Pratesi
The default needs to be changed, because it is annoying to get a modify flag without having made any change in the document. Sorry, but summary gets adjusted again. Hello Matthias, this issue is a candidate for your 'Change defaults list'. So I change this one to your owner.
I will hopefully find time to make the change for OOo2
changed target to Office later
m55's schema suggests that this default is fixed for 2.0
closed