[tdf-discuss] Re: Impress & ODF ecosystem ideas (was: some ideas for public agenda for TDF board meeting on Friday, May 8th at 1300 Berlin time)

Hi,

> Edmund Laugasson wrote:
> > Hereby are my proposals to consider:
> >
> >       o *topic:  zooming feature in presentation* - e.g. famous
> >         proprietary Prezi <https://prezi.com/> and its FLOSS counterpart
> >         Sozi <https://sozi.baierouge.fr/> (together with Inkscape
> >         <https://inkscape.org/>) but today also MS PowerPoint have
> >         <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-E2o0H6_pg> these zooming
> >         presentation features. *Would kindly ask TDF Board help to
> >         engage developers to implement these zooming features seen in
> >         Sozi, Prezi, MS PowerPoint also into LibreOffice Impress and
> >         improve also ODF accordingly.* *
> Would love to see that! That said, TDF as a charity cannot easily
> develop software, so it's more the 'try and motivate volunteers to
> help improving Impress' angle that might be successful here.
>
> Two suggestions to push this further:
>  - cut this down into more bite-sized pieces (which is more manageable
>    and rewarding for volunteers)

Well - zooming presentation is the feature. How to cut this into pieces?
Possibly look what MS PowerPoint and Prezi allow to do. Certainly there
are details, different options - I guess we would like to do all this
and probably even more that those programs do not allow in order to more
engage users to use LibreOffice. Well - don't have MS PowerPoint (only
free account in MS OneDrive and there is web-based MS PowerPoint) - only
that referred video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-E2o0H6_pg
(certainly from video portals can be searched more) and Prezi is usable
for everyone via web.

I guess it requires programmatical point of view to understand, what is
the chunk size suitable for developers. Probably one function per chunk,
e.g. scroll mouse up: one; scroll mouse down: second; etc.

Basically I see that I (probably are more interested users) need to
describe all functionality that MS PowerPoint and Prezi have related
with zooming presentation feature and every action that can be done is
one chunk suitable for developers.

>  - engage with the UX & design project to come up with ideas how to
>    best integrate that with the existing GUI (their list ist
>    design@global.libreoffice.org)

Well - probably on way is to look how existing apps mentioned above have
done by integrating zooming presentation feature.

Haven't participated yet - don't know that community, hopefully can find
right words to engage.

> After that, e.g. adding a more fully fleshed-out proposal to the GSoC
> ideas list might find a motivated student next year
> (https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/GSoC/Ideas).

That, I guess, needs to be polished already by developers, designers.

>       o *topic: zooming feature (and much more) in spreadsheet* -
>         referring to TreeSheets <http://strlen.com/treesheets/> and its
>         tutorial <http://strlen.com/treesheets/docs/tutorial.html> and
>         intro video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB-saQZfrsw>.
>         *Would kindly ask TDF Board help to engage developers to
>         implement these features seen in TreeSheets also into
>         LibreOffice Calc and improve also ODF **accordingly*.
>
> Same answer probably as above - just in this case, it feels a bit like
> a fringe feature, where perhaps people who _want_ to use it, could use
> the original (which is Free Software just as well)?

Well - TreeSheets (the original) is developed quite slowly, has unique
file format that is not usable in smart devices and still lacks some
features and has some disturbing issues. We can then say that why
zooming presentation while we have Sozi as free software? Somehow MS
PowerPoint decided also duplicate even proprietary Prezi has all it. I
just thought that LibreOffice developer community is more vibrant and
creative - therefore there is more probable to move on faster and
through it make LibreOffice more functional than ever before - this
applies in both zooming presentation and spreadsheets. Shall LibreOffice
have zooming presentation because MS PowerPoint has it? Probably. But
zooming spreadsheet is definitely something that MS Excel doesn't have
but even that could change in future as current mailing list archive
could be read also by Microsoft people...

> >  o **much better SVG
> >         <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Vector_Graphics> support
> >         (edit, save, open) in LibreOffice** - if not yet then would
> >         propose to replace all graphics in LibreOffice with SVG
> >         <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Vector_Graphics> images
> >         (menus, clipart, etc). Also allow edit SVG
> >         <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Vector_Graphics> and
> >         save/open into/from that file format in LibreOffice. E.g. allow
> >         save (initially also e.g. export) Writer, Draw, Impress
> >         (possibly also others) documents into SVG and later also open,
> >         edit seamlessly. As SVG
> >         <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Vector_Graphics> is also
> >         XML-based and FLOSS format then hopefully it is easy to add.
> >         Especially in the lights of upcoming SVG2 standard
> >         <https://svgwg.org/svg2-draft/>.
> SVG support could certainly be even better in LibreOffice, I
> agree. But there's a great FLOSS program for svg editing, Inkscape -
> so I wonder, how much of that would make sense to duplicate?

That's a good question. E.g. LibreOffice Draw duplicates most features
found in Inkscape and still exist. As Inkscape has more features then
for real drawing users will probably use Inkscape. But still LibreOffice
has Draw despite there are some better FLOSS drawing programs out there.
The question is then - will LibreOffice have then great import features
of SVG when it is created with Inkscape? I mean recognize layers and all
others. Also same applies to export. For me Inkscape has more features
so that I (might not be the only one) might need to abandon LibreOffice
and switch to Inkscape unless I really need features that do not exist
in Inkscape, e.g. fields in text editor, calculations in spreadsheet,
database queries, etc. As writing text, drawing are possible also in
Inkscape and designing features are also right there. Still I think that
keeping people using LibreOffice, it is worth to have enough engaging
features right in LibreOffice.
 
> There's also some subtle differences in ODF vs. SVG, that make it hard
> to convert one into the other without data loss.

That's true and therefore I thought that possibly there would be easier
to switch to Inkscape than try to revamp ODF.

> >   * *ODP export script for Sozi* - here is the recent developer post
> >     <https://github.com/senshu/Sozi-export/issues/25#issuecomment-624238494>
> >     where is asked easy-to-use node.js module for Sozi to allow easily
> >     export SVG presentation into OpenDocument Presentation. There
> >     already is similar node.js module for proprietary PPTX export.
> >     *Would kindly ask TDF Board help to engage developers to create such
> >     ODP-module**for Sozi*.
> Read the github issue, interesting conversation - my take from that
> is, that perhaps better, overall ODF library support would be great to
> have!

Well, actually I started that issue in GitHub... So, I've read it. To be
honest, I can live without that ODP plugin but just pity that there is
PPTX plugin but not ODP. To propagate also LibreOffice Impress usage, I
made that issue in GitHub and even donated to developer to engage him.

> Interested
> to take over a few of those next bits?

Well, can try but certainly any help appreciated. I guess will have more
time when schoolyear is over.
----
Edmund

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