Hello, (apologies in advance for the long message :-) ). Today I wanted to work a bit on chapter 7 of the Writer user guide, so the first thing I did was to switch from the portrait template (PT) to the landscape template (LT). The conversion is generally straightforward for the text (replace some styles, adjust the Outline numbering, change the Tip/caution/note table, re-apply bullet and numbered styles) however for screenshots it is a completely different story. As a result I ended up not working on chapter 7 at all :-)
Issues and consequences: Each of the two columns of the new template has a width of 12.5cm while a typical figure (say a full width dialog box at 72 dpi) is about 14cm. Consequence: a very large percentage of the figures will need rescaling and may not be easily readable. The new column length has shrunk from 24.75cm down to 17.5 (about 30%). Many pictures (but also notes, tables)Some long notes and long tables occupy 30 to 40% of the column.. Consequence: chances of having columns half empty are quite high. My monitor, a fairly old 17" non wide screen displays 1280 pixels horizontally and I can zoom a landscape A4 page up to 125% and still be able to read all the text. Consequnce: a font size 12 as baseline for the LT is too wide. Better use 9 or 10. Further consideration and conclusion The rationale for changing the user guide format was to make it better readable on screen with printing being a secondary priority. In my opinion rather than adopting the new LT, we should either a) revert to the PT with some modifications b) make the LT not an A4 but rather an A3 or something between an A3 and A4. I have created two mock ups (albeit very incomplete) so that you can test them on your machine. A3 chapter is here http://oooauthors.org/en/authors/userguide3/res3/NewTemplate_optionB_A3Landscape.odt/file_view the A4 portrait with some modification is here: http://oooauthors.org/en/authors/userguide3/res3/0207WG-WorkingWithStylesScreenOptimized_v1.odt/file_view I think you will agree that they are visually very, very similar to the LT chapter 09 I created the other day, but have clear advantages when it comes to convert "old OOo2.x chapters". Cheers, Michele Additonal info: The changes to the PT for solution a) include: - change the page style to mirrored and decrease the inner margin (wasted space in the middle of the screen) - use a bigger font as baseline (14) - remove the header as done for the landscape template (LT) - create a new title page The changes to the LT for solution b) would only require changing the page sizes to "user" or change it to A3 and then increase the font size to 14 Advantages of the suggested approaches a) or b): - no need to re-take or re-work on figures Advantages of a) - easier to zoom to single page when needed - many printers allow multiple pages per sheet so printing could be made identical to a LT printout - possible to set up pdf export so that initial view is continous facing (mimicking the LT template) Advantages of b) - many printers allow to re-scale the printout to a "familiar" format thus allowing printing out on A4. Disadvantages: the font size of the screenshots will be (much) smaller than the OOoTextBody font size.
