Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 31619
Errors importing paper size; need option to adapt size
Last modified: 2013-02-07 22:39:17 UTC
Filed because I can't work out how to attach a document to an existing issue. Duplicates 3729, 19761, 8004, 3856, 8004 seems to have the biggest history but it is flagged resolved - even though the problem is still in 680m38 and very irritating! This issue attaches the document referred to in my posts to 8004 and 3729
Created attachment 16528 [details] UK MS word file, A4 when native, Letter when imported
This document also has Letter format when I open it with MS Word 2003... I'll test this later on a native platform.
At last ..... I have now got a write protected floppy with original MS Word documents and the UK Word97 version used to produce 'some of them'. In all cases, the paper size when imported to OOo is the same as that declared by MSWord - a motley mixture of Letter and A4 on the various documents. The mixture may reflect the fact that they do not all come from the same source computer, typist, template or start-with document. So why do we still have a problem? A clue could be the fact that the Word I have access to has the 'Allow A4/Letter paper resizing' box checked in Tools- Options-Print. If this is a MS default, it looks as though Microsoft users need never know which of these two paper sizes they are using! The print image is squeezed and stretched to fit whichever size the printer offers. What to do about it? That's a community decision, but please don't just copy MS. At least explain somwhere prominent that squeezing and stretching plays havoc with dimensions! It has taken me until now to discover this particular MS 'feature' that has made the use of pre-printed stationery such a nightmare.
Hi, this issue has been lieing dormant for a while, drcowsley , if this is still a problem, just add mru to th CC list and send him a comment.
There are five issues dealing with essentially the same problem: 3856 OOo later (ama) 8004 Closed dormant (mru) 19761 Closed duplicate of 3729 (bh) 3729 (3 votes) Started (bh) 31619 Unconfirmed (mru) I believe the problem originates with Microsoft's decision to stretch and shrink documents between letter and A4 paper sizes as default. MS users don't need to know what paper size they have set, and my problems (in A4 land) arise from users who unwittingly have letter size documents. I guess users in letterland suffer from unwitting A4- size documents. Whilst it does give naive users and transatlantic travel(l)ers a consistent pagination without pain, the MS solution sucks as a default, and we should not copy it. But if we just leave things as they are, our users have to find all this out for themselves. Since it took us more than 2 yrs to find it, new users will mostly suffer or give up on OOo if we do nothing. What we do should be a community decision. My firm vote is that we immediately change our default from no warning to warn when printer paper size does not match the document. When bad things are about to happen this will alert the naive user to the Microsoft default he is using, and put any stigma where it belongs. Second, we should expand the help on printing to include explicit reference to this issue so that it doesn't take years to find. If we have any Microsoft to OOo conversion courses they should explain the issue too. Third, for multinational companies who ship .doc files around the world, we should consider providing a stretch-and-shrink option (to retain pagination) so that OOo doesn't introduce new problems for these users. And we should formally get all five issues (and any others on this that I haven't found) into one place!
Now this can be called an "Enhancement". As figured out, the import works good in this point, but a feature to adapt paper size to the currently available (->printer) format is requested.
To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on my owner to the owner "requirements".