Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 6002
Referenced Objects
Last modified: 2013-02-07 22:39:52 UTC
Problem: When using e.g. the presentation application to write a storyboard, I oftne use the same elements on many pages. Now, when I need to make a change to a particular object (e.g. if I have to change an element with a grey background to an element with a blue background and a green border) I would have to apply these changes manually to all objects on all pages I have written. This is a highly time-consuming and error-prone process. Solution: It would be great to be able to 'reference' objects. This means that I can create an 'original' object and then be able to derive 'reference objects'. This would mean that the original is not simply copied, but the newly created references reflect the changes I apply to the original object (e.g. when I change the color of the original from grey to blue, all references change their color too). To push this one step further: Managing reference objects could be cone with a sort of 'palette window' where I could drag-and-drop: Dragging an object from a page to the palette creates a new original, draggin from the palette to the page could create a reference. (Exact interaction needs to be finalized, but I could provde more detail if the idea sounds interesting). Examples: CorelDraw 11, Macromedia Freehand and Adobe Illustrator seem to provide this reference-functionality Adobe GoLive uses drag-and-drop palettes
to me this very much sounds like it should be solved with styles. OOo already supports styles for a variety of objects, and this here seems to be a candidate, too. You would then just tell your objects to have a given style, and whenever you change the style, all objects change, too. This is how it works for instance with paragraphs in OOo Writer. I surely think we should re-use the style concept here, and not reintroduce a new concept ("referenced objects") which seems to do the same. Anyway, to me this very much sounds like a feature request for the drawing layer. Changing the component and QA contact accordingly. Frank
In response to Frank's comment: Using the styles feature only work for propagating graphical changes. My suggestion aims at changing content of groups of elements. Imagine a situation where you have drawn a set of five objects in a certain order. Now you have used this group on severeal pages and now decide to change the order of the elements, or you need to add or delete an item. Currently, you would have to do this manually on all pages. My proposal aims at extending the current 'Gallery' feature. It is already possible to drag a group of objects to the gallery an to reuse them via drag-and-drop. I would propose to extend this functionality: - Extend the current copy-functionality (all elements drawn from the galery a copies) to provide a copy-as-reference (items from the galery are mere references to the galery item (just like a windows desktop shortcut is a mere representation of a program file, not the program file itself) - Make Objects in the Galery editable. Objects would be edited in a seperate OOo document. Closing the document via save or update would update the object within the Gallery. Previously copied items would remain unchanged, referenced items would reflect the changes applied within the Gallery. For example: Create a group of objects 'A' 'B' and 'C' as text boxes from left to right. Drag them to the Gallery. Drag-and-drop some references. Edit the item within the Gallery to be 'C' 'A' 'B'. Update the Item. Result: All references are now displayed as 'C' 'B' 'A'.
Reassigned to Marc.
bh@openoffice.org is responsible for features, so I reassign this.
OpenOffice.org Issue Tracker - Feedback Request. The Issue you raised has the status 'New' pending further action, but has not been updated within the last 4 years. Please consider re-testing with one of the latest versions of OOo, as the problem(s) may have already been addressed. Either use the recent stable version: http://download.openoffice.org/index.html or consider trying the new OOo 3 BETA (still in testing): http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta/ Please report back the outcome so this Issue may be Closed or Progressed as necessary - otherwise it may be Resolved as Invalid in the future. You may also wish to search for (and note) any duplicates of this Issue that may have advanced further by checking the Issue Tracker: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/query.cgi Many thanks, Andrew Cleaning-up and Closing old Issues as part of: ~ The Grand Bug Squash, pre v3 ~ http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/announcementbeta.html
Lowering Issue priority... From: http://qa.openoffice.org/scdocs/ddIssues_EnterModify.html#priority P2 - Marks severe problems which affect a significant number of customers. Issues with this priority must be fixed before the target release ... and should be dealt with as soon as possible. Not fixing them for the target release is not acceptable.
To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on my owner to the owner "requirements".