- Susobhan Ghosh's blog

GSoC Final Report

Sun, 21 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

As Google Summer of Code 2016 draws to a close, I’d like to summarize my work for LibreOffice on the project - ‘Review of Sidebar and it’s functionality’. I had an awesome experience working with the LibreOffice community, under the mentorship of two amazing people - Katarina Behrens and Yousuf Philips.

This post aims at linking and listing out all the feature milestones developed during my project and the relevant commits, along with the goals missed and work to be done in the future.

Milestones Achieved

Writer Page Deck - You can read the enhancement report here and the blog post describing the feature here.
Commits

Slide/Page Properties Panel for Draw and Impress - You can read the enhancement report here and the blog post describing the features here.
Commits

Shapes Deck - Default Shapes Panel for Draw - You can read the enhancement report here and the blog post describing the features here.
Commits

Media Playback Panel - You can read the enhancement report here and the blog post describing the features here.
Commit
- tdf#87794: Media Playback Panel

Import Bitmap functionality in Area Content Panel - You can read the enhancement report here.
Commit
- tdf#90078 Add import bitmap button to Area Panel

Styles Preview Checkboxfor Styles & Formatting sidebar - You can read the enhancement report here.
Commit
- tdf#93845: Style Preview Checkbox for Styles & Formatting sidebar

Miscellaneous Commits

Milestones Missed

More Shapes Panel for Shapes Deck - You can read the detailed enhancement report here. This is a work in progress, and I was stuck at how to load the categories of shapes into LibreOffice, folder wise, similar to the Gallery. The draft of the work done can be found here (please mail/ping if you cannot access the patch).

At the end, I have been focusing more on QA tasks to improve the quality of my existing contributions, instead of developing new panels and functionalities like Documents-level measurement (tdf#98453), Grid & Guidelines Panel(tdf#98820), Find & Replace Panel etc.

You may find all my gerrit patches here in one go, and most of my merged commits here too.

Overall, a summer well spent. I’ll be contributing to LibreOffice even after the completion of GSoC, aiming to fix the rest of the Sidebar issues. Happy Hacking!

Media Playback Panel

Sat, 20 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

If you’ve ever complained about the media playback toolbar taking up your precious screen space at the bottom, this one’s for you! The upcoming LibreOffice 5.3 will host the new Media Playback Panel in the Properties Deck.

The controls mainly draw inspiration from the ones in the Media toolbar at the bottom, and I’ll be describing the same in this post. This is a contextual panel, only showing up when a media item is selected.

The entire enhancement report can be found here. I myself have been working on this, with the help of my mentors - bubli (Katarina Behrens), and jay (Yousuf Philips).

#Features#

The Playback Toolbox housing 4 buttons to control media state:
- Play: Play Media
- Pause: Pause Media
- Stop: Stop the playing Media (default selected when Media is not playing)
- Loop: Sets the media playback on repeat
Seek slider: Slider to seek Media item at a particular time.
Time Status Box: Displays the elapsed and total time of currently playing and selected Media item.
Volume Slider: Slider to increase or decrease volume of Media item according to need.
Mute button: One click button or unmute selected Media item.

Shapes Deck: Default Shapes Panel for Draw

Sat, 20 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

One of the major improvements to Draw in the upcoming LibreOffice 5.3 is the introduction of the Shapes Deck. The Shapes Deck was envisioned to house two panels - Default Shapes Panel and More Shapes Panel. This post aims to describe the functionality of the Default Shapes Panel.

The entire enhancement report can be found here. The design session for the Shapes Deck can be found here. I myself have been working on this, with the help of my mentors - bubli (Katarina Behrens), and jay (Yousuf Philips).

The Default Shapes Panel is basically a catalog of all the shapes present in the shapes toolbar of Draw. It hosts 153 shapes spread out over 10 categories, namely:

Lines & Arrows
Curve
Connectors

Basic Shapes
Symbols

Block Arrows
Flowchart

Callouts
Stars
3D Objects

The panel has been made scrollable to save space for the upcoming More Shapes Panel, which will be implemented right below it.

That’s all folks!

Page Deck for Writer

Thu, 18 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

One of the major improvements, in the upcoming LibreOffice 5.3 (scheduled to release on January 30, 2017), is the Page Deck for Writer. The deck hosts four panels - Page Format Panel, Page Style Panel, Page Header Panel, and the Page Footer Panel - to bring you the most commonly used page properties. This post aims to describe all the aforementioned panels and the features they provide.

The entire enhancement report can be found here. I myself have been working on this, with the help of my mentors - bubli (Katarina Behrens), and jay (Yousuf Philips).

Page Format Panel

Size dropdown to easily select standard page sizes.
Width and Height spinboxes to customize page size.
Orientation listbox to choose between Portrait and Landscape mode.
Margins listbox to select preset page margins. Available presets are -
- None
- Narrow (1.27 cm all around)
- Moderate (lr: 1.91cm, tb: 2.54cm)
- Normal 0.75" (2 cm all around)
- Normal 1" (2.54cm all around)
- Normal 1.25" (lr: 3:18cm, tb: 2.54cm)
- Wide (lr: 5.08cm, tb: 2.54cm)
- Mirrored (inner: 3.18cm, outer: 2.54cm, tb: 2.54cm, page layout: mirrored)
lr = left + right
tb = top + bottom

Page Styles Panel

Numbering dropdown to select numbering format of the pages. Corresponds to the 'format' option under Layout settings in Page Format Dialog.
Dropdown to change background of the page. Currently 5 settings - None (no background), Color (Solid Fill), Gradient, Hatching, and Bitmap
- Pattern Setting
- Color Setting
- Gradient Setting - Make a gradient with two colors, which gives added customization compared to presets
- Hatching Setting
- Bitmap Setting
Layout Setting to select Page Layout - Right and Left, Mirrored, Only Left, and Only Right.
Columns setting to select frequently used page column layouts.

Page Header Panel and Page Footer Panel

Both these panels provide similar functionalities, so I'll be describing them in one go

Checkbox to enable header (or footer).
Margins setting to set the left and right margins of the header (or footer).
Dropdown to change the spacing of the header (or footer) from the top (or bottom) of editable area of the document.
The Margins and Spacing presets are similar, and currently 8 presets are present:
- None
- Extra Small (0.16 cm)
- Small (0.32 cm)
- Small Medium (0.64 cm)
- Medium (0.95 cm)
- Medium Large (1.27 cm)
- Large (1.9 cm)
- Extra Large (2.54 cm)

Setting to set same content for headers or footers on different pages of the document. There are four settings which are available -
- All Pages - Sets the same header or footer on all the pages of the document
- First Page - Sets a common header or footer to all pages except the first page of the document
- Left and Right Page - Sets separate headers or footers for Left and Right sided pages.
- First, Left and Right - First page has a unique header (or footer), followed by separate headers (or footers) for Left and Right sided pages

Properties Panels for Impress/Draw

Tue, 09 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

LibreOffice 5.2 is out, and one of the key improvements to Impress and Draw has been the introduction of the Properties Panels to the sidebar - namely Slide Content Panel for Impress, and Page Content Panel for Draw.

These panels enable quick access to the slide/page size and background properties. Both these panels have the same underlying code and features, and only differ in labels depending on the Application Context. So this post aims at explaining all these features in the panel available to both Impress and Draw.

The entire enhancement report can be found here. The main credits for developing the panel go to bubli (Katarina Behrens), Rishabh Kumar, and jay (Yousuf Philips). I have been making enhancements to the same after the panel got published.

Features

Format dropdown to easily change Slide/Page format.
Quick option to change Orientation of the Slide/Page
Dropdown to change background of the slide/page. Currently 5 settings - None (no background), Color (Solid Fill), Gradient, Hatching, and Bitmap
- Color Setting
- Gradient Setting - Make a gradient with two colors, which gives added customization compared to presets
- Hatching Setting
- Bitmap Setting
Insert Image as Bitmap - With option (pop-up) to set the image as background for all pages/slides
Checkbox to toggle the display of the master slide's background.
Checkbox to toggle display objects.

A few other enhancements like a Edit Master Slide button to go to Master view of Page/Slide, Close Master Slide to close Master Slide, and context label changes are expected to be added in LibreOffice 5.3.

- Susobhan Ghosh's blog

GSoC Final Report

Milestones Achieved

Commits

Commits

Commits

Commit

Commit

Commit

Milestones Missed

Media Playback Panel

Shapes Deck: Default Shapes Panel for Draw

Page Deck for Writer

Page Format Panel

Page Styles Panel

Page Header Panel and Page Footer Panel

Properties Panels for Impress/Draw

Features