Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 78914
Universal "Fit to page goal" button for shrinking (or expanding) any document to X# of pages
Last modified: 2013-02-07 22:42:19 UTC
A useful tool which all versions of MS Office have had since at least Office 97 is a "fit to page" option found in the Print Preview screen. This option was simple, and put in one toolbar button. The idea was to click this ONE BUTTON and have the entire contents of the opened document be forced to fit onto one page to save paper, ink/toner, time, and energy. The font, images, tables, ect. would be sized to whatever size it took to accomplish the desired one page printout. I think this feature should be implemented to all components of OpenOffice. It could even be taken a step further. I suggest that a "page goal" button be created that is visible on all Print Previews screens. To the left of the "page goal" button should be a numeric text box representing the number of printed pages GOAL. The default value of '0' would keep all font sizes and image/table settings at their original value. If one were to change the text box value to '1' for example. When they clicked the "page goal" button, located to the right of the input box, the document would be properly formated to fit and print on only one page. Now, if someone has a 200 page manual as their document, fitting to one page would be useless. So in this case one could type '30' in the text box and then they clicked the "page goal" button the document that was originally 200 pages would be formated properly to shrink down while maintaining layout and fit the new 30 page goal. To get an idea of how the layout should be maintained take a look at how the web browsers such as Opera, Firefox, and IE treat the page contents when the zoom level is changed from 100% to 25%, from 100% to 150%. I think the "fit to page" feature is very useful in MS Office and if something with the additional details I specified is added to OpenOffice... Our product will not only match MS Office's Printing abilities, but surpass them! :D
TM->requirements: please have a look, thanks !
*** Issue 78914 has been confirmed by votes. ***
WordPerfect has this feature. It has a very configurable and easy to use window that allows you to tick what is to be modified to allow the page to fit. They include not just the font, but allows any or all of all 4 margins to be changed, space between lines, etc. They are often modified so subtly that you can hardly tell what was done. I would love the feature in OOo to allow alternate/additional was to shrink/expand rather than JUST font (but even this would be better than nothing).