Issue 31619 - Errors importing paper size; need option to adapt size
Summary: Errors importing paper size; need option to adapt size
Status: CONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: Writer
Classification: Application
Component: code (show other issues)
Version: 680m38
Hardware: All All
: P3 Trivial (vote)
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: AOO issues mailing list
QA Contact:
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2004-07-17 05:01 UTC by drc
Modified: 2013-02-07 22:39 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Issue Type: ENHANCEMENT
Latest Confirmation in: ---
Developer Difficulty: ---


Attachments
UK MS word file, A4 when native, Letter when imported (19.50 KB, application/msword)
2004-07-17 05:04 UTC, drc
no flags Details

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Description drc 2004-07-17 05:01:42 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
Comment 1 drc 2004-07-17 05:04:16 UTC
Created attachment 16528 [details]
UK MS word file, A4 when native, Letter when imported
Comment 2 michael.ruess 2004-07-19 16:01:20 UTC
This document also has Letter format when I open it with MS Word 2003... I'll
test this later on a native platform.
Comment 3 drc 2004-07-20 09:50:15 UTC
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.
Comment 4 askoorb 2004-11-21 11:02:09 UTC
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.
Comment 5 drc 2004-11-21 23:08:55 UTC
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!
Comment 6 michael.ruess 2004-11-30 11:18:21 UTC
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.
Comment 7 bettina.haberer 2010-05-21 14:48:25 UTC
To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on
my owner to the owner "requirements".