Bug 33603 - Presenter notes should be available in normal view as a scrolling pane
Summary: Presenter notes should be available in normal view as a scrolling pane
Status: ASSIGNED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Impress (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
Inherited From OOo
Hardware: All All
: high enhancement
Assignee: Sarper Akdemir (allotropia)
URL:
Whiteboard: target:24.8.0 inReleaseNotes:24.8
Keywords: needsDevEval, needsUXEval, topicUI
: 92391 95994 128990 132524 135279 155373 157942 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks: Notes-View
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2011-01-27 09:23 UTC by Jeff Fortin Tam
Modified: 2024-03-12 04:48 UTC (History)
37 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
First rough mockup of the UI for adding notes (324.18 KB, image/png)
2014-01-30 19:06 UTC, Tin Man
Details
Quick mockup of notes UI (hidden by default) (323.14 KB, image/png)
2014-01-30 19:31 UTC, Tin Man
Details
Quick mockup of notes UI (shown) (322.87 KB, image/png)
2014-01-30 19:39 UTC, Tin Man
Details
Mockup of a vertical scrolling notes layout reusing the standard LibreOffice sidebar expander widgets (172.54 KB, image/png)
2019-09-22 15:38 UTC, Jeff Fortin Tam
Details
Screenshot (35.35 KB, image/png)
2024-03-04 09:28 UTC, Heiko Tietze
Details

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Description Jeff Fortin Tam 2011-01-27 09:23:36 UTC
Cloning/rewording some comments from:
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=56172
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=80195

PowerPoint (and other apps) allows users to edit the notes associated with a slide just by entering the text in a edit-form right under the slide*. The current behavior in LibreOffice Impress is to show slides and notes as a single "paper-like" page.

This approach has many problems:
- Lengthy notes overflow from the page instead of scrolling
- Every slide needs to be zoomed in/out, scrolled up/down, because of this
- You have to "care" about font size because of the lack of scrolling
- You cannot edit the slide's contents at the same time as editing notes
- Selecting text is difficult (you have to place the mouse cursor precisely on characters to activate the "text box" that contains the notes)
- Margins all around, wasting tons of precious space on computer screens
- It tries to emulate paper on a piece of software that is definitely not meant for it as a preferred target medium (why would we need this if we could write notes in Writer anyway?)
- You can't view all notes of all slides in a combined manner


*Note: I'd suggest taking advantage of widescreen monitor aspect ratios and putting the notes widget in the sidebar on the right, instead of eating precious vertical space. Besides, most presenter notes are meant to be a collection of short sentences (bullet-point style), which means that they are typically better suited for a vertical layout instead of a horizontal layout (since some lines may not fill the entire space).
Comment 1 Gaetano Giunta 2011-06-13 08:36:01 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 2 Don't use this account, use tml@iki.fi 2011-06-13 08:48:46 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 3 Björn Michaelsen 2011-12-23 11:49:04 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 4 A (Andy) 2013-04-23 19:47:42 UTC
changed to enhancement request
Comment 5 Tin Man 2014-01-30 19:06:21 UTC
Created attachment 93080 [details]
First rough mockup of the UI for adding notes
Comment 6 Tin Man 2014-01-30 19:31:55 UTC
Created attachment 93086 [details]
Quick mockup of notes UI (hidden by default)
Comment 7 Tin Man 2014-01-30 19:39:10 UTC
Created attachment 93087 [details]
Quick mockup of notes UI (shown)

So, the basic idea behind my proposal is to have an additional pane for notes, collapsed by default.

To add notes, one would expand the pane. LibreOffice would automatically bring cursor focus to the Notes field and, if the zoom level was set to "Fit width and height", it would adjust the zoom level so that the slide fit snugly above the Notes pane.
Comment 8 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2015-08-09 02:39:06 UTC
Great enhancement for impress, so lets see how hard it is to implement.
Comment 9 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2015-10-28 16:21:29 UTC
Math has a similar panel for typing in text, though it doesnt have formatting capabilities.
Comment 10 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2015-12-01 07:13:42 UTC
*** Bug 92391 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 11 Óvári 2015-12-01 08:44:05 UTC
*** Bug 95994 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 12 Óvári 2015-12-01 08:47:45 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 13 Robinson Tryon (qubit) 2015-12-13 11:24:17 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 14 Simon Phipps 2017-02-07 17:37:57 UTC
This seems to have slipped out of sight. As a presenter this is a key reason I might not use Impress. I wonder if we might get a developer assessment of this issue please, which while strictly an enhancement actually conceals a usability bug.
Comment 15 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2017-05-12 22:33:33 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 16 Thorsten Behrens (allotropia) 2017-05-13 00:51:03 UTC
(In reply to Yousuf Philips (jay) from comment #15)
> @Thorsten, @Maxim: Could you possibly evaluate how difficult this would be
> to achieve? Thanks.

Not terribly hard, it's essentially re-jiggering existing functionality. Can provide code pointers if there's interest.
Comment 17 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2017-05-13 12:15:50 UTC
(In reply to Thorsten Behrens (CIB) from comment #16)
> Not terribly hard, it's essentially re-jiggering existing functionality. Can
> provide code pointers if there's interest.

Yes please do if you dont already know someone interested in taking it on, as this would highly improve the UX for professionals.
Comment 18 document.foundation 2018-02-06 11:51:25 UTC
(In reply to Yousuf Philips (jay) from comment #17)
> (In reply to Thorsten Behrens (CIB) from comment #16)
> > Not terribly hard, it's essentially re-jiggering existing functionality. Can
> > provide code pointers if there's interest.
> 
> Yes please do if you dont already know someone interested in taking it on,
> as this would highly improve the UX for professionals.

Also interested to work on this.
This is the main reason why I keep on using other tools to prepare slides for presentations.

No need for fancy formatting in this dockable pane, usual suspects are fine as the idea is to be able to get references and additional information useful to presenters and possibly viewers (when sharing the Notes).
Comment 19 machineghost 2018-03-10 17:56:18 UTC Comment hidden (me-too)
Comment 20 machineghost 2018-03-10 18:06:03 UTC Comment hidden (me-too)
Comment 21 Richard Neill 2018-07-19 20:35:00 UTC
You're absolutely right. When I make slides, I am always editing the visuals (what goes on the slide and then the projector screen), and my speech (what goes in the notes, and I use as the autocue) in parallel. It would make LO *so* much more productive if the speaker notes were always visible  at the same time, rather than laboriously having to context switch in and out of the Notes view (about 5 seconds every time, after the slides re-flow).  I estimate this one thing would have saved me 10 hours of work this week.

In an ideal world, for me:

* The area around the slide itself would be locked, to avoid pointless hor/vert scrolling

* The notes would always be visible, under the main slide, [or perhaps in a side panel] - and the place for typing them shouldn't move around or be deletable.

* The notes area would be forced to plaintext - yes, I want to be able to embed line-breaks (and maybe bold/italic/underline), but I really don't want any more than that level of formatting - and it always looks messy on printouts if the speaker notes embed random font sizes, or the position moves around underneath the slide.

* When giving a presentation, the notes should show up in the optimal way for autocue, say at 18pt font, in one of the most legible - this might be a property of LO's config, rather than the specific presentation - and obviously, shrink the font if the notes are so long that they scroll off the screen!

* When exporting, the notes should be well laid out under the slide, and should not move sideways. 

Fixing this would definitely merit a bug bounty from me - thanks.
Comment 22 Stefano Mersi 2018-07-20 07:24:05 UTC
I would subscribe to a bounty to implement the feature as described by Richard Neill
Comment 23 b.daams 2019-04-02 21:34:29 UTC
Any progress on this usability issue? I'd love to be able to write notes and design slides simultaneously!
Comment 24 DarkTrick 2019-06-06 19:14:06 UTC
Same here, I would also really like to see this feature available. 

@Notes for "what do I say during the presentation":
Imo, The current style is inconvenient for notes regarding what the speaker says.
My usual note length exceeds the space for notes inside the notes view by far. That makes using notes a little harrowing.

@Notes for other people
The Notes View makes total sense!
Comment 25 Jeff Fortin Tam 2019-09-22 15:38:12 UTC
Created attachment 154370 [details]
Mockup of a vertical scrolling notes layout reusing the standard LibreOffice sidebar expander widgets

As I stated in my original bug report above, I believe an approach with a "horizontal" notes pane (bottom bar) would be inferior to one where we use a vertical sidebar, for three simple reasons:

* Computer screens are widescreen (unlike the 90's where PowerPoint's bottom bar came from) or even ultra-wide (one of my screens is 21:9), so I have more UI pixels to spare on that dimension than in the other.
* Presenter notes are often meant to be bulletpoint-style short sentences, they are better-suited to a vertical layout (they would "waste" the space of a horizontal layout and require very tedious scrolling). And super wide sentences suck for reading and wouldn't even remotely resemble what would actually be shown on the presenter screen, anyway.
* The technical implementation would be easier, because you wouldn't have to create a whole new pane widget, you just reuse the existing sidebar and add a new component in there, which should make it relatively straightforward.

Attaching a mockup that illustrates how this would actually look like in practice.
Comment 26 mirko.pieropan 2019-12-08 14:49:33 UTC
I like this very much!
Comment 27 Timur 2019-12-11 20:40:36 UTC
*** Bug 128990 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 28 mike_sanders 2020-01-19 13:23:07 UTC
Given that I opened https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=103816 more then 10 years ago and that this turned out to be a duplicate of a bug report being another 5 years older: *please* do implement something like this, finally...

The current way of editing notes annoys me again every time I have to prepare a presentation.
Comment 29 aluizioneto 2020-03-09 19:55:35 UTC
I would like to join the effort to make this happen. 10 years is a long time for such an important feature to be on the waiting line... Any LibreOffice coders willing to give some hints on where to start? Maybe some code pointers to the places where this could be implemented in an easy clean way as Thorsten Behrens (CIB) offered some time ago?
Comment 30 Timur 2020-05-02 15:56:51 UTC
*** Bug 132524 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 31 Timur 2020-05-02 15:58:50 UTC
I think that 20 users in Cc make importance High.
Comment 32 Attrib 2020-05-31 01:21:20 UTC
To try and get some attention on this enhancement I'm offering a little bitcoin experiment with a "enhancement bounty". 

Pretty simple 100 Eur via BTC for this enhancement. Posted more details on how this might work on Reddit titled: "Jury-rigged Enhancement Bounty - Presenter notes in normal view!"

Would really love to generate some momentum on this one, this feature will be really valuable as evidenced by the interest shown here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/libreoffice/comments/gtprjk/juryrigged_enhancement_bounty_presenter_notes_in/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x 

Feedback and suggestions welcome.
Comment 33 Óvári 2020-05-31 02:09:00 UTC
(In reply to Attrib from comment #32)
> Feedback and suggestions welcome.
Have you contacted the Certified Developers and has there been a reply with the cost, and amount of time required for them, to implement this feature?
https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/

Having a developer is willing to give a quote on the cost to implement this feature would be a good start.

What do you think?

Thank you
Comment 34 Attrib 2020-05-31 03:05:16 UTC
(In reply to Óvári from comment #33)
> (In reply to Attrib from comment #32)
> > Feedback and suggestions welcome.
> Have you contacted the Certified Developers https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/

Great suggestion Óvári! I didn't realize there was a certified developers directory.


> Having a developer is willing to give a quote on the cost to implement this
> feature would be a good start.

Agree it would be a great start to get an estimate or scope first. I just wouldn't want to lead the developer on since I don't have a budget that could  fairly pay for a devs time on a project like this. Even given a fair quote and scope I can't fund the work alone. 

I am very interested to hear how much work this would be so if it's a more realistic experiment, I'm happy to moderate the bounty to incentivize a well written spec/quote. If that's a sensible first step and might make it easier for others to contribute. 'Bountying' a spec is much harder to define success though. 

I also realize 100 Eur is still really just a token rather then fair remuneration for a talented developer. I was hoping someone would play along to test out the idea of an open source feature bounty and complete this popularly requested enhancement at the same time.
Comment 35 Timur 2020-07-30 07:47:36 UTC
*** Bug 135279 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 36 jiresch 2021-03-15 10:58:45 UTC
I would love to see this implemented. This is currently the main reason that keeps me from using LO for my job.
Is there any update on this?
Comment 37 RichardNeill 2021-09-07 15:03:45 UTC
Can I please reemphasise how much this would improve the process of making slides! I literally switch to and from the notes mode every few seconds while editing, and it turns a reasonably smooth process into a very, very painstaking one. 

Like many, I don't treat the notes as "a commentary on the slide added after the fact, or a placeholder for footnotes", I use it to contain and edit the actual body of my speech. To me, the "Speaker notes" are "the single most important part of the presentation and how I edit and design the structure; in fact the "Normal" graphic is merely the visual-aids that go with the speech".

At the moment, it feels like having to use the "vi" editor, or typing in Baudot code, where you have to do a mode-switch dozens of times a minute, just to achieve the simplest thing. 

Google slides gets this one right.

I'll gladly offer £1k for a fix.
Comment 38 Regina Henschel 2021-09-07 16:42:05 UTC
(In reply to RichardNeill from comment #37)
> Can I please reemphasise how much this would improve the process of making
> slides! I literally switch to and from the notes mode every few seconds
> while editing, and it turns a reasonably smooth process into a very, very
> painstaking one. 

You know, that you can open a second window with the same presentation (Window > New Window) and use slide mode and notes mode side by side, so that changing something in the slide is immediately reflected in the notes?
Comment 39 Benyamin Limanto 2022-12-31 05:46:58 UTC
(In reply to Regina Henschel from comment #38)
> (In reply to RichardNeill from comment #37)
> > Can I please reemphasise how much this would improve the process of making
> > slides! I literally switch to and from the notes mode every few seconds
> > while editing, and it turns a reasonably smooth process into a very, very
> > painstaking one. 
> 
> You know, that you can open a second window with the same presentation
> (Window > New Window) and use slide mode and notes mode side by side, so
> that changing something in the slide is immediately reflected in the notes?

Not quite usefull for presentation that's... big.. with small screen... I hope this could be implemented new future...
Comment 40 nj 2023-01-20 19:22:15 UTC
Is this the right place to enter a feature request that Impress show notes by default in presenter view, or at least have an option to show those notes by default?

At present, having to switch on the notes is an extra step that one has to go through before one can use Impress effectively. It is an extra step that one expects to see those notes. One expects it for two reasons: (1.i) people write notes so that they can see them when presenting; (1.ii) if one is used to PowerPoint (from which indeed one might have imported one slides.

A further reason that having to switch on the notes is an _extra_ step (or hurdle) obtains (like 1.ii) if one is importing from PowerPoint. Today it is still the case that Impress garbles some PowerPoint presentations. Thus, after fixing those problems, one still has to . . remember to switch on the note view.
Comment 41 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2023-05-19 09:46:30 UTC
*** Bug 155373 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 42 Tex2002ans 2023-10-24 06:41:49 UTC
A user, JiL, at the Collabora Forums recently requested this feature too:

- https://forum.collaboraonline.com/t/inquiry-about-powerpoint-style-comments/2119

- - -

To get this feature in...

Google Slides, you can press:

- View > Show speaker notes

Powerpoint, you can press:

- View > Notes

or:

- Press "Notes" in the middle of the very bottom taskbar.

For Microsoft's instructions, see:

- https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/add-speaker-notes-to-your-slides-26985155-35f5-45ba-812b-e1bd3c48928e
Comment 43 Heiko Tietze 2023-11-10 07:37:58 UTC
*** Bug 157942 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 44 stulz 2023-11-10 09:43:31 UTC Comment hidden (me-too)
Comment 45 Sebastien 2023-11-24 08:05:10 UTC Comment hidden (me-too)
Comment 46 Commit Notification 2024-02-22 08:47:55 UTC
Sarper Akdemir committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/c4c1ca58bb587a56a30c7f4817c346054ce37f2a

tdf#33603: sd: add notes panel for normal view

It will be available in 24.8.0.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 47 Gabor Kelemen (allotropia) 2024-02-26 12:29:48 UTC
Tested a bit in:

Version: 24.8.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 74185b8edf7f046a3372319da86a1d8ca0024c87
CPU threads: 15; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: default; VCL: win
Locale: hu-HU (hu_HU); UI: en-US
Calc: default

Some issues:
1. Text formatting does not work from the toolbar/sidebar. In the normal view it works, changes get passed on to the bottom pane.

2. Pasting text from browser (such as text from a Bugzilla page, tested with Firefox) resizes font to an unreadably small size

3. Area fill setting does not work from sidebar, but works in the main view

4. List formatting from sidebar in main view works, not from bottom pane. In bottom pane numbering puts a tab between number and text, not in main pane

5. Paragraph horizontal alignment formatting works, vertical align does not, if set from sidebar

6. Paragraph "distance after" seems to be much larger… maybe the zoom level is not applied?

7. The downwards pointing arrow does not change to an upwards pointing one when the pane is collapse. In the sidebar the arrows direction changes when it is collapsed.
Comment 48 Commit Notification 2024-02-27 12:34:56 UTC
Sarper Akdemir committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/75da0c3c576253c61092e762ead974c3600b15b4

related tdf#33603: do not register NotesChildWindow for Draw

It will be available in 24.8.0.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 49 Sarper Akdemir (allotropia) 2024-03-04 06:51:09 UTC
Notes panel is available via View -> Notes Panel right now in the nightly builds.

UX/Design team: I'd appreciate some additional opinions about the behavior and current state. How would you like to see this notes panel end up?

Thank you!
Comment 50 Heiko Tietze 2024-03-04 09:28:26 UTC
Created attachment 192937 [details]
Screenshot

(In reply to Sarper Akdemir (allotropia) from comment #49)
> UX/Design team: I'd appreciate some additional opinions about the behavior
> and current state. How would you like to see this notes panel end up?

As Gabor pointed out users expect the common interactions. The context menu must not be the only way to format but an alternative to shortcuts (no ctrl+B to make the font bold yet, for example) and toolbar/sidebar/menu. The Properties sidebar deck changes however from editing to master attributes, I guess not only to avoid another deck but also for convenience since it's not possible to make the whole slide bold, for example. The only way out of the dilemma is to add the notes panel to the contextual presentation of the deck. And treat the notes panel like any other editing control, ie. the same context menus and the same interactions.

Or to have zero formatting in the notes panel. But I think this wont be accepted either.

(In reply to Gabor Kelemen (allotropia) from comment #47)
> 1. Text formatting does not work...
> 2. Pasting text from browser ...resizes font to an unreadably small size
> 4. List formatting from sidebar in main view works
> 5. Paragraph horizontal alignment formatting works
> 6. Paragraph "distance after" seems to be much larger…
Confirmed

> 3. Area fill setting does not work
Font color is not set automatically (remains white on yellow)

> 7. The downwards pointing arrow does not change...
Not confirmed (kf5, Karasa Jaga icon theme)
Comment 51 Jeff Fortin Tam 2024-03-04 14:35:45 UTC
This is a minor UX detail, but based on what I see in Heiko's screenshot: please give the notes textfield a little bit of inner padding (a typical/standard value would be 6px), as the text (in the dark zone) being completely flush to the edge (before the light-gray zone) feels cramped and broken (a bit like bug #159531).
Comment 52 Jeff Fortin Tam 2024-03-04 14:51:39 UTC
A more significant detail question: peeking at the commits, it is not entirely clear for me whether the current implementation also offers it as a sidebar by default (like in the mockup from attachment #154370 [details]) rather than only a bottom pane? As I originally wrote back in 2011, and I believe this is even more true today, using a sidebar for this rather than a bottom pane would make more sense as the default UX.

Short summary of my reasoning:

* Wide (& even ultrawide) landscape monitors have become the norm since the late 2000's
* Screen-wide line lengths* are typographically hard to read, vs wrapping 45-75 cols
* Presenter notes are often bullet-point form, i.e. lots of line breaks

*: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_length talks about the research


Additionally, maybe the sidebar and bottom panel notes widget could have a button to toggle/switch between the two layout modes, for convenience. The app should then remember what the last chosen layout was.
Comment 53 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2024-03-12 04:48:53 UTC
I mentioned it in the release notes: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/index.php?title=ReleaseNotes%2F24.8&type=revision&diff=744253&oldid=744249

We can of course update later on if need be.