Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 16745
Make creating a booklet WYSIWYG
Last modified: 2013-08-07 14:38:26 UTC
I looked for booklet in issues and found issue #5217 and issue #10796, both of which are resolved as WORKSFORME. Both of these issues describe the desire for booklet printing and both explain how to go about getting. However, the solution is to get booklet format by shrinking the page down from 8.5 x 11 in portrait mode to something that fits on half a 8.5x11 page in Landscape. Although I was excited to see that I can create a booklet, there are several usability problems. The obvious one is that it isn't easy to find. Searching for booklet in help yields nothing. After finding the above two issues, I found that the print option is brochure. Although the functionality seems very similar, I tend to think of brochures as 1 sheet of paper, whereas a booklet can be multiple sheets. I think that the difference is important in terms of the enhancement I am requesting. The second usability problem is the user can't see what the output will look like until it is printed because the solution is to shrink the print so that it will fit. Print Preview does not even show what the pages will look like because the functionality is not applied until it is being sent to the printer. Therefore, the user must create the page using enlarged graphics and font sizes, print in brochure mode (remembering to change the print settings to Landscape) and then look at the output before they know whether or not the brochure/booklet is viewable. Changing the page size using the format menu option doesn't work because it doesn't stop the print functionality from shrinking. The enhancement, then is to make creating a booklet/brochure part of the formatting prior to printing. For a booklet, the page dimensions should be changed so that it fits on half a page, but while editing, the document flows from page to page as it does today. The print mechanism would automatically order and print the "half" pages so that the pages can be arranged and folded into a book. However, a brochure would be easier to visualize if there were two pages with columns set up where the text flowed from one column to another column in the order that makes sense for the brochure. When I have created brochures in the past using open office, I have simply set up text frames in the columns where I wanted the information to be. My kids have had to create mini books for school projects and, not knowing about the brochure setting, it has been really painful to try and get the pages to layout the way that I wanted. Having only played with the brochure setting, I can see where although the setup would be easier, usability could still be improved.
Reassigned to BH
Confirming, setting target-milestone... In short: When doing a booklet print, there should be no need to create the document in a scaled-up way for the document to look as expected when shrinked down by the booklet-print option. (for details please see origninal description)
Yes, it is not very usable. As it is no keyfeature for 'Q', we take it for 'Office later'.
resetting prio, setting keywords, reassigning according to new RFE-process
*** Issue 52893 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
*** Issue 46455 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
For teachers, it would be very economic (and ecologically sensible), if you could print two pages per sheet (half size, landscape). As I understand this issue, this is exactly what is suggested as "booklet". Now, I have to export to PDF and use the kpdf print dialogue to enable the multiple pages print mode. Even more tricky to achieve is another use case that is common for teachers: I need 30 copies of a sheet, but to save paper, I decide to print 15 papers in "booklet mode". This includes cloning a page so I can fill a landscape sheet with the downscaled sheet. Recently I cloned a page manually, and as a result, there were missing lines on every 2nd page. I (and many teachers) would appreciate a feature added tp the printer dialogue like: Page selection: (here you could state a list of pages, also 1,1 to clone p.1) Print mode: single page | two pages per sheet Please ask, if my explanations are ambigues in any way. Thanks Ralf