Dear All, Apologies for the long email :)
I have been thinking about the handling of graphic objects in Impress which is currently covered in chapters 4 and 5 plus appendix B. I initially drafted a single chapter which was revolving around three aspects:
1. inserting pictures from file or gallery 2. use of the graphic style 3. tools in the drawing barSince the chapter was way too long Jean quite rightly decided to split it up in three parts, however having gone through them all now, I think there is a better way to reorganize the existing material.
The proposal is to create three short-ish chapters and remove the Appendix.The first chapter "Inserting pictures" would include the section on inserting a picture and modifying it with the picture toolbar. It would also include the use of the Gallery.
The second chapter "Modifying the attributes of graphic objects" would first introduce the use of the stlyes as well as the organizer tab, then explain in detail how to set up each of the components of a style (this is by the way exactly what we did for Presentation styles in chapter 3). The chapter should go in some level of detail with regards to the following attributes of a graphic object:
- Line (3 tabs) - Area (7 tabs, ) - Shadowing (only accessible via the Styles dialog) - Transparency (only accessible via the Styles dialog) - Text (2 tabs) - Text animation (included in the Text dialog for manual formatting) - Dimensions (only in the graphic style dialog, but not very useful) - Connectorswhile for the remaining attributes, which(*) are shared with the Presentation styles, the user would be redirected to chapter 3 (inserting text):
- Font - Font effects - Indents and spacing - Tabs - Alignment (*) For Gary: which or that?The idea of this chapter would be to stress the usefulness of styles as a wrapper while at the same time giving sufficient guidance to the reader who wants to format manually the graphic objects.
Finally, a different chapter "Creating and manipulating graphic objects" would describe the use of the Drawing toolbar including the various shapes, the alignment, arranging, grouping and 3D buttons. It should also cover the positioning and resizing of graphic objects (or point to the first of these three new chapters).
In summary, the proposal is not to create new text, but only to re-structure the one we have already.
I try to attach a document illustrating how I envisage the split up. If the list does not accept attachments, I will make it available on OOoAuthors.
Before going on and starting the copy & paste party, I would like to know what you think.
Cheers, Michele
NewStructureForGraphics.odt
Description: application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text
