Hi Peter,
PeeWee schrieb:
Hello Regina
My German is very limited - no problem in German bars and restaurants
and paying there bill. I did spend two years in Hamburg and learnt
some German from the people I became friends with. However that was a
long time ago.
I still struggling with English. My written English is often strange and
it is difficult for me to understand spoken English.
You have made 3D objects a little clearer with your explanation. What
puzzles me is why is there such a complication with 3D objects?
Let's go back in history. In StarOffice and in the sequel in OOo1 only
some kind of shapes exists. The status bar shows in the left field,
which kind of object it is. For example, you will see "Rectangle
selected" or "Callout selected" or "Parallelogram selected" or "Bézier
curve selected" ...
This draw objects can be turned to 3D objects. The methods are rotation
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_of_revolution) and extrusion
(http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrusion_%28Geometrie%29; I find no
English one).
There exists a 3D engine with a lot of features, but the UI is confusing
and bad designed, not changed since StarOffice times. The UI is in great
want of refresh and redesign.
These classical draw objects were not able to store the features of the
"Autoforms" of Microsoft Office. Therefore a new kind of shapes were
implemented in OOo2, the so called custom shapes. They got the ability
to contain informations, how they should be rendered as
3D-extrusion-object. And they got a new UI for setting this properties.
For all the different custom shapes you get only the one string "shape
selected" in the status bar. At the same time the "Fontwork gallery" was
introduced. From a technical view, that are custom shapes as well.
Once
a 2D object is extruded into 3D then you should be able to use all
the tools that are available for the ready made 3D objects.
The ready made 3D objects are not only simple 3D objects, but they are
3D scenes. You cannot have such 3D object without a root 3D scene. Such
3D scene cannot include custom shapes. There is no way to write such
thing into the file format. And there exists no requests to change the
spec in this direction. If you convert a custom shape by the tools "To
3D" or "To 3D rotation object" they are converted to a polygon or to a
curve first, but the user is not notified about that. Therefore the 3D
dialog is not suitable for custom shapes.
To get a deeper understanding of this very different kind of objects, it
might be worth reading the spec, section 10.5 "3D Shapes" and 10.6
"Custom Shape".
[http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/os/OpenDocument-v1.2-os-part1.html]
This
complication makes it a difficult thing to get across simple enough
for a novice user to understand, so your help will be appreciated.
I agree, that is a challenge. In contrast to the old German version, I
now would make two strictly independent sections, one for "3D Shapes"
and a new section covering all the properties and handlings of "Custom
Shapes". There exists not only their special way of extruding, but also
the yellow handles to vary the shapes, and they differ in the way text
is used. You can even write your own custom shapes, but sadly their is
no UI for that, but you have to write into the file directly. I had a
talk about it last FOSDEM.
The current drawing toolbar in LO makes it more complicate. OOo had the
classical rectangle and ellipse in the toolbar, and you could turn them
into 3D shapes. But the current drawing toolbar has dropped them, and
instead has included the custom shapes "Rectangle" and "Ellipse" which
are already in the drop-down list "Basic shapes" of the custom shapes.
To use the classical shapes, you have to customize the toolbar first.
The consequence of which is, that users do not get the properties they
are used to, rounded corners for example.
If you have questions about the shapes, please ask. I do not have time
enough to write a full text, but will comment on single problems.
Kind regards
Regina
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