Created attachment 124649 [details] Screen estate being wasted by not displaying pages side by side I am using 5.0.6.1, non-rc, on Fedora 23 but only 5.0.6.1-rc is listed above in the form. The "Zoom & View Layout" help page describes that "The single page view layout displays pages beneath each other, but never side by side." ... but how to see the pages side by side then? Can't find it anywhere in the menus. Moreover, the help page also describes that the "View Layout" options are available for text documents only, but clearly it would be useful for Draw, too. E.g. I use Draw to import PDF files and annotate them. On very wide screens it would be very convenient to have at least two pages displayed side by side. You can see from the screenshot I attach that I could probably cater for three pages. Perhaps there is a good reason not to do this, but I can't imagine it. Thanks.
(In reply to Gianfranco Cecconi from comment #0) > The "Zoom & View Layout" help page describes that "The single page view > layout displays pages beneath each other, but never side by side." > > ... but how to see the pages side by side then? By using multiple-page (apparently called columns in the help) or book view.
Hi David, I could find the "columns" in Write, the name of the feature is misleading but you are right. Draw can't do the same for no apparent reason, though, so my enhancement request still stands I believe, what do you reckon? (In reply to David Tardon from comment #1) > (In reply to Gianfranco Cecconi from comment #0) > > The "Zoom & View Layout" help page describes that "The single page view > > layout displays pages beneath each other, but never side by side." > > > > ... but how to see the pages side by side then? > > By using multiple-page (apparently called columns in the help) or book view.
In the Writer module, they are labeled "Single view" - "Multi-page view" - "Book view" and the mode is selected from the status bar. In both Draw and Impress (they use the same structures) the canvas does not support a multi-slide/multi-page view. Rather, there is the Page/Slide preview pane with a sorter/reorder function. Point is--in Draw/Impress there is no mechanism to display multiple pages/slides to an active editing canvas. That would have to be developed from scratch. The use case of working with a multi-page PDF document imported to be a multi-page ODG document is rather abusing our support for PDF import. LibreOffice is not a PDF editor. And, we provide fully commented export of ODF documents to "hybrid" PDF that append the ODF document to the PDF--and reopen in the correct LibreOffice. Personally I'd say this is a WONTFIX, but open for now.
I agree with stuart that viewing more than 1 page at once doesnt have a benefit for the type of program Draw intends to be. I also believe that the rendering of multiple pages would negatively affect performance.
I've investigated for open source PDF editors / annotators, but I actually could not find anything better than Draw at doing what I've been using it for over the last two weeks. It's performing so well that I never had the feeling I was "abusing" the functionality, so it is difficult not to wish for the book view. Perhaps you have some other product in mind I don't know about. The hybrid PDF+ODG option V Stuart Foote talks about is very interesting, I did not know about it. It is not clear from the help pages, however, how to tell LibreOffice to re-open the hybrid PDF to take advantage of that. Perhaps nothing is needed, and it's intentional. I understand the performance concerns. Thanks in general for caring.
(In reply to Gianfranco Cecconi from comment #5) > ... > The hybrid PDF+ODG option V Stuart Foote talks about is very interesting, I > did not know about it. It is not clear from the help pages, however, how to > tell LibreOffice to re-open the hybrid PDF to take advantage of that. > Perhaps nothing is needed, and it's intentional. That is correct a LibreOffice generated Hybrid PDF simply opens back to the LibreOffice module that exported it. LibreOffice can not edit PDF! All we do is import PDF into any one of the LO modules with filters--Draw pages by default, Impress slides, or Writer text documents [1]. The LibreOffice "Hybrid PDF" format is a non-standard PDF hack. Basically when exporting to PDF we extend the PDF's container and embed a copy of the ODF document archive. That can be an original spreadsheet from Calc, or a text document from Writer, or a single page graphic from Draw. Or, even a Draw document containing a multipage PDF import as you've found. Unfortunately no Math formulas. In all cases--the export to PDF is done with our normal filter process. The only difference in the "Hybrid PDF" is appending the ODF archive (the document is saved to tmp in the process and then exported). PDF parsers other than LibreOffice will open the "Hybrid PDF", but ignore the extended ODF archive--they don't know what to do with it. But when LibreOffice again opens the "Hybrid PDF" archive it will detect the included ODF archive and rather than flushing the PDF back though the import filters will instead *reopen the ODF document* in the module as it was added. The intent for the project was to provide the source ODF document with the resulting PDF. Not to be able to directly edit the PDF but to allow the PDF to be *regenerated* after changes are made to the ODF document. The "problem" with the Hybrid PDF is that other programs *can* change the PDF content--but would make no change to the contained ODF, and when a LibreOffice user again opens the PDF they'd not see any changes made but only the original ODF. So, use with caution--if it works for you great, caveat emptor. As to changing the Draw or Impress canvas to support a multipage/multislide editing mode--it is not impossible, but would likely require a lot of dev effort to refactor. I simply don't believe it is necessary in the general use case for LibreOffice. =-note-= [1] To expose import filters other than to Draw, you need to set use of the LibreOffice dialogs from Tools -> Options -> General: Open/Save dialogs. Choosing the file type sets the import filter used when opening the PDF.