Bug 53391 - Would be nice to be able to save a set of drawing pages as a presentation
Summary: Would be nice to be able to save a set of drawing pages as a presentation
Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Draw (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
3.6.0.4 release
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Draw-UX
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Reported: 2012-08-12 03:15 UTC by Paul Weaver
Modified: 2016-06-17 09:48 UTC (History)
8 users (show)

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Crash report or crash signature:


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Description Paul Weaver 2012-08-12 03:15:00 UTC
Impact:
As a user, I don't know how easily to get a series of drawing pages into a format that I can present to others. For example, I've made some UI mockups as a several-page drawing file, and now my boss has asked me to present them full-screen to my team in a meeting room with a projector.

Reproduction:
 - Make a drawing with a series of pages
 - Think "Actually, I want to present this stuff directly as a presentation"
 - See that there is no "SlideShow" menu in a drawing, so I can't just present my drawing file
 - Think "Ah, I'll just save my drawing as a presentation - they are pretty much the same"
 - Fail to find a good way to convert my drawings between drawing (.odg) format and presentation format (.odp) that didn't involve me copying and pasting every single page of my drawings.

Expected behaviour:
I would expect that there is a format option "ODF Presentation (.odp)" format option in the "Save as..." dialogue. If "Save as..." is perhaps inappropriate, I would search in the "export" dialogue. In the newly created presentation, I wouldn't expect anything more than each slide has been assigned the blank layout, but has all my drawing stuff present.

If LibreOffice were to do anything funky, it'd be quite cool if it found the first (top-left for English) piece of text in the drawing and made it the slide title (without changing the actual drawing formatting), so that I had a rough outline of my work ready for me.

The other alternative to saving a different docuemtn might be to make it easy to present a drawing, but I favour the format conversion as it keeps the roles of the documents more distinct.
Comment 1 Roman Eisele 2012-08-17 15:37:07 UTC
IMHO this is a valid enhancement request, and the feature requested would be really useful; therefore changed the Status to NEW.

Of course, one could just export the drawing pages as PDF file, and then present this with a PDF viewer (yes, it does work, I have done so ;-); but many people will not regard this as a good way to present the slides.

Given the fact that "Impress [is] a hack on top of Draw" (quotation from
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/tree/sd/README?h=libreoffice-3-6
), it should be not that difficult to add some Draw -> Impress conversion.
Comment 2 Roman Eisele 2012-08-17 15:42:07 UTC
@Thorsten Behrens,
@Radek Doulik:
IMHO this looks like a useful feature request, even if it might be a rather laborious task. Please take a look at it, maybe leave a comment about how difficult it would be to implement this feature, and some hints about how that could be done, and consider coming back to it if you ever wonder which new features should be implemented next ... ;-)
Comment 3 Samuel Mehrbrodt (allotropia) 2013-04-27 22:53:14 UTC
(In reply to comment #0)
>  - Fail to find a good way to convert my drawings between drawing (.odg)
> format and presentation format (.odp) that didn't involve me copying and
> pasting every single page of my drawings.

Well, you could select *all* pages, and copy&paste them in one run.

Yet I think this is a good function. Writer has something similiar (File->Send).
Comment 4 Heiko Tietze 2016-05-25 15:22:25 UTC
Balsamiq Mockups, a well known tool to create UI mockups, presents scribbles via PDF (or png). But the internal conversion would really be a nice to have.
Comment 5 Francisco 2016-06-03 00:52:27 UTC
Hi,

I just wanted to comment that, as a workaround, what I do is to 
1) uncompress the ODG file, 
2) change the mimetype from "application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.graphics" to  "application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.presentation"
3) Zip all files in folders, and change the extension to ODP
4) Open the new file with LibO. It will argue that the file is damaged but it can try to repair it. And it usually does.

Dirty, but it will work if you need it right now.
Comment 6 Heiko Tietze 2016-06-03 08:18:17 UTC
(In reply to Francisco from comment #5)
> I just wanted to comment that, as a workaround...

Wow, that simple. EASYHACK?
Comment 7 Francisco 2016-06-04 15:44:37 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #6)
> (In reply to Francisco from comment #5)
> > I just wanted to comment that, as a workaround...
> 
> Wow, that simple. EASYHACK?

You should ask to a developer :-D
Comment 8 Katarina Behrens (Inactive) 2016-06-10 16:33:08 UTC
Less dirty workaround: 

1. Blank Impress file
2. Menu Insert > File ... Select to open your .odg file 
3. In a pop-up that appears, click the filename to expand the "tree"
4. Select one or multiple Draw pages (by holding down Ctrl)
5. Confirm with OK

and voila, Draw pages are now slides of a presentation. 

Sadly I have no creative idea how to streamline the user experience here
Comment 9 Francisco 2016-06-12 15:26:13 UTC
(In reply to Katarina Behrens (CIB) from comment #8)
> Less dirty workaround: 
> 
> 1. Blank Impress file
> 2. Menu Insert > File ... Select to open your .odg file 
> 3. In a pop-up that appears, click the filename to expand the "tree"
> 4. Select one or multiple Draw pages (by holding down Ctrl)
> 5. Confirm with OK
> 
> and voila, Draw pages are now slides of a presentation. 
> 
> Sadly I have no creative idea how to streamline the user experience here

Indeed, this is a less dirty workaround to have the objects one have in a ODG into a ODP file. However, and please correct me if I'm wrong, when doing this the page of the original file isn't respected. 

It's perfectly understandable that the page size is kept in a "presentation like" size. However, if the content of ODG file is complex the content could be altered (regarding disposition) and different shapes could be placed in different places. But otherwise, it's a nice and simple solution.

--

Last, I'd like to point out that from Impress, it is possible to save an ODP file as ODG simple using File -> Save as -> ODG.
Sadly, when trying to open this file, Impress will be used instead of Draw. This is because the file mimetype is kept as presentation instead of graphics (this is how I discovered my workaround).
Comment 10 Heiko Tietze 2016-06-14 06:28:11 UTC
(In reply to Francisco from comment #9)
> Last, I'd like to point out that from Impress, it is possible to save an ODP
> file as ODG simple using File -> Save as -> ODG.
> Sadly, when trying to open this file, Impress will be used instead of Draw.
> This is because the file mimetype is kept as presentation instead of
> graphics (this is how I discovered my workaround).

Sounds like another bug. Please file a ticket.
Comment 11 Francisco 2016-06-14 18:49:30 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #10)

> Sounds like another bug. Please file a ticket.

He... I though it could be intentional. I have filled bug 100379.

Regards.

Francisco
Comment 12 Samuel Mehrbrodt (allotropia) 2016-06-16 15:56:29 UTC
Before we think of making this an Easy Hack, we need to define a workflow.
How should this work? 

Allow selecting "odp" in the save dialog? Something else?
Comment 13 Francisco 2016-06-16 20:35:00 UTC
(In reply to Samuel Mehrbrodt (CIB) from comment #12)
> Before we think of making this an Easy Hack, we need to define a workflow.
> How should this work? 
> 
> Allow selecting "odp" in the save dialog? Something else?

Change the mimetype also, otherwise the same as in bug 100379 will happen.
Comment 14 Maxim Monastirsky 2016-06-16 23:01:44 UTC
In the file open dialog, there is an entry "ODF Drawing (Impress)", that allows opening drawings in Impress. So that's basically WORKSFORME.
Comment 15 Heiko Tietze 2016-06-16 23:20:43 UTC
(In reply to Maxim Monastirsky from comment #14)
> In the file open dialog, there is an entry "ODF Drawing (Impress)", that
> allows opening drawings in Impress. So that's basically WORKSFORME.

And how do you save a drawing as a presentation? Import and export filters are usually different, despite the fact that Impress is more or less similar to Draw.
Comment 16 Francisco 2016-06-16 23:27:56 UTC
Hi,

IMHO, this bug could be solved from the "capacity of the software" perspective, but not from the UX perspective. 
I really doubt that an average user would realize that he can do that with filters, because they aren't used many times. In my case the most used way to open a file is double click over the file browser, or through the Recent files list, not the Open Dialogue. 
However, the Save Dialogue is used almost every time a file is created. Thus, "Saving as" or "Exporting as" sounds to me a best way of exposing this capability.
Comment 17 V Stuart Foote 2016-06-16 23:56:53 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #15)
> (In reply to Maxim Monastirsky from comment #14)
> > In the file open dialog, there is an entry "ODF Drawing (Impress)", that
> > allows opening drawings in Impress. So that's basically WORKSFORME.
> 
> And how do you save a drawing as a presentation? Import and export filters
> are usually different, despite the fact that Impress is more or less similar
> to Draw.

You don't SaveAs and I'd agree with Maxim. The filter conversions are already reasonably well implemented--if a bit subdued in the GUI (they are much more obvious when you use the LibreOffice file dialogs).

The "impress8_draw"  filter (which shows as "ODF Drawing (Impress)" in the LibreOffice Dialogs), opens the Drawing into Impress. Where it can then be saved as an Impress presentation. The filter has fairly high fidelity to the original drawings. The "impress8_draw" filter also works well for CLI conversions.

soffice --headless -convert-to odp:"impress8_draw" "<filename>.odg"

Bug 100379 was about going the other way Impress -> Draw--which also works-- but the "draw8" filter there is not optimized for turning Impress slides into Draw pages. And it fails from CLI.
Comment 18 Heiko Tietze 2016-06-17 07:17:28 UTC
(In reply to V Stuart Foote from comment #17)
> The "impress8_draw"  filter (which shows as "ODF Drawing (Impress)" in the
> LibreOffice Dialogs), opens the Drawing into Impress. Where it can then be
> saved as an Impress presentation. The filter has fairly high fidelity to the
> original drawings. The "impress8_draw" filter also works well for CLI
> conversions.
> 
> soffice --headless -convert-to odp:"impress8_draw" "<filename>.odg"
> 
> Bug 100379 was about going the other way Impress -> Draw--which also works--
> but the "draw8" filter there is not optimized for turning Impress slides
> into Draw pages. And it fails from CLI.

And why don't we have a save-as/export option in the Draw UI?
Comment 19 Maxim Monastirsky 2016-06-17 09:48:50 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #15)
> And how do you save a drawing as a presentation?
After it opened in Impress, you can click the save button. But the original report was about a way of moving drawing contents to a presentation, and this can be achieved by import alone, thus WORKSFORME.

(In reply to Francisco from comment #16)
> I really doubt that an average user would realize that he can do that with
> filters, because they aren't used many times.
Maybe, but that's how it works in LO for other formats too. If you look at the filter list, there are entries like "HTML Document (Writer)" and "HTML Document (Calc)", to open the same format in different applications. Same for RTF and PDF. However, I agree that the UX is far from ideal. If people think that adding an "export" option will result in a better UX, no reason why we can't consider that too.