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bonitaP
Blue Pill
Joined: Nov 19, 2009
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 Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 7:50 pm Post subject: V3.0.1 ptch 1 for MacOSX no way to change to landscape orien |
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There seems to be some big problems with simple things in Neo Office. To start with there is no PAGE SETUP menu item! This breaks the Mac user interface convention.
But even with this problem there was a way to change the document orientation from default portrait to landscape in the early version.
Now there is no way to do that simple task. I find that unbelievable. Have I missed something? I followed the HELP suggestions but there are no parameters under the dialog box from the "PRINT" menu item.
Please, I have to set my documents to landscape. I have about 24 years of expert experience with Macs. I also used to be a software engineer. So I am not a novice.
Thanks for reading this post.
Michael |
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pluby
The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949
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| Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 8:17 pm Post subject: Re: V3.0.1 ptch 1 for MacOSX no way to change to landscape o |
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| bonitaP wrote: | | There seems to be some big problems with simple things in Neo Office. To start with there is no PAGE SETUP menu item! This breaks the Mac user interface convention. |
In NeoOffice 3.0.1, there are two ways to change the orientation:
1. Select the File :: Printer Settings menu. The Printer Options dialog will appear. Click the OK in that dialog and the native Page Setup dialog will appear. In the native Page Setup menu, set the orientation and paper size and press the OK button.
2. Select the Format :: Page menu. In the dialog that appears, click on the Page tab, select the orientation radio button that you want, and click the OK button.
The reason that there is no File :: Page Setup menu is that NeoOffice is not a "built-from-scratch" Mac OS X application. Instead, it is a Mac version of the OpenOffice.org office suite. As a result, in many cases the names of menu items, dialogs, etc. will not be exactly the same as what Apple or Microsoft have chosen for their applications.
What we have done in NeoOffice is try to replace OpenOffice.org's non-native dialogs with native Mac OS X dialogs in the places where they will work. Unfortunately, the native Page Setup dialog has never fit in obvious menu item in NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org code but it is there.
| bonitaP wrote: | But even with this problem there was a way to change the document orientation from default portrait to landscape in the early version.
Now there is no way to do that simple task. I find that unbelievable. Have I missed something? I followed the HELP suggestions but there are no parameters under the dialog box from the "PRINT" menu item. |
In past versions of NeoOffice, the File :: Printer Settings menu immediately displayed the native Page Setup dialog. NeoOffice 3.0.1, however, is based on the newer OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 version. In that OpenOffice.org version, the OpenOffice.org engineers moved the Printer Options dialog to the File :: Printer Settings menu so we had to resplice the native Page Setup dialog in after that dialog displays.
This is probably why you could no longer find the native Page Setup dialog: you selected the right menu but the Printer Options dialog appeared. If you press that dialog's Cancel button, the native Page Setup dialog will appear.
Patrick |
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pluby
The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949
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| Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 8:27 pm Post subject: |
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I forgot to mention that if you find the changes in NeoOffice 3.0.1 to be hard to adapt to (OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 made a lot of changes that makes NeoOffice 3.0.1 very different from the older versions), you can download NeoOffice 2.2.6 from here.
Like NeoOffice 3.0.1, NeoOffice 2.2.6 supports Snow Leopard and NeoOffice Mobile. The only different is that NeoOffice 2.2.6 is based on the older OpenOffice.org 2.2.1 version that NeoOffice 2.2 through 2.2.5 was based on.
Hope that helps,
Patrick |
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pluby
The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949
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| Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2009 7:13 pm Post subject: |
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I have good news: I was able to get the native Page Setup dialog to appear immediately when you select NeoOffice 3.0.1's File :: Printer Settings menu just like it does in the older NeoOffice 2.2.6 releases.
bonitaP's post reminded me of when I found that the OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 code had changed the File :: Printer Settings menu to display the Printer Options dialog. I had forgotten how much frustration that change caused me and our NeoOffice 3.0 Early Access members earlier this year.
Even though I got the native Page Setup dialog to display after the Printer Options dialog, I was never happy with that approach as it is unreasonable to expect new users to not know the undocumented "click OK in the Printer Options dialog" step.
Today I worked on changing NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org code so that the File :: Printer Settings menu will immediately display the native Page Setup dialog like in the attached screenshot.
With this new approach, we no longer have to hide either the Printer Options dialog or the native Page Setup dialog when the File :: Printer Settings menu is pressed. I did try changing the File :: Printer Settings menu to File :: Page Setup. But unfortunately, the OpenOffice.org code has a separate set of File submenus for each application and each of those submenus is buried in complex OpenOffice.org resource file so it is not trivial to change the menu name.
If anyone is interested in testing this change, install the following test patch and let us know if you see any strange or unexpected behavior. Although not ideal, I hope everyone finds this change to be an improvement:
Intel:
http://joe.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-3.0.1-Patch-1-Test-5-Intel.dmg
PowerPC:
http://joe.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-3.0.1-Patch-1-Test-5-PowerPC.dmg
Edit by pluby: Remove NeoOffice 2.2.6 test patch links
Patrick
Last edited by pluby on Wed Nov 25, 2009 10:59 am; edited 1 time in total |
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rays
The Anomaly
(earlier version)
Joined: Sep 23, 2004
Posts: 475
Location: Geneva, Switzerland
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| Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2009 3:22 am Post subject: |
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Hi Patrick,
Found a couple fo issues with this Patch installed in Snow Leopard.
At first I thought the function wasn't working at all or as expected. The re-orientation of the page doesn't actually 'take' unless I also change the page size before hitting 'OK'. Even if I want to change from A4 portrait to A4 landscape, I still have to re-select A4 paper size before 'OK' for the orientation to change.
Also had a couple of cashes during these attempts to re-orintate the page. The forst occured when I was in page preview mode in NeoOffice and treid to re-orienttate the page.
The second was just using the Page Settings menu in the normal view and I cant be speciifc about the cause. It occured after 'OK' on the native page set-up and before I dismissed the OOo page settings dialog, if that makes sense. Crash logs attached.
Hope this helps,
Ray
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Ray Saunders
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pluby
The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949
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| Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2009 9:29 am Post subject: |
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Ray,
| rays wrote: | Also had a couple of cashes during these attempts to re-orintate the page. The forst occured when I was in page preview mode in NeoOffice and treid to re-orienttate the page.
The second was just using the Page Settings menu in the normal view and I cant be speciifc about the cause. It occured after 'OK' on the native page set-up and before I dismissed the OOo page settings dialog, if that makes sense. Crash logs attached. |
For me, there is no crashing on Mac OS X 10.6.2. Since both of your crashes occurred in Apple's native Page Setup dialog code (we display Apple's Page Setup dialog without customization), I suspect that you have found a Mac OS X 10.6.2 bug.
I did not modify any of the code that displays the native Page Setup dialog in the test patch. I only changed when it is invoked so if my theory is correct, the same type of crash should occur if you try to change paper size and orientation in NeoOffice 3.0.1 Patch 1 without the test patch.
Does the crashing occur in NeoOffice 3.0.1 Patch 1? If so, can you try doing the same changes in the native Page Setup dialog in Apple's Safari and TextEdit applications? Do they also crash?
Patrick |
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rays
The Anomaly
(earlier version)
Joined: Sep 23, 2004
Posts: 475
Location: Geneva, Switzerland
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 1:41 am Post subject: |
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I can now confirm this crash is replicable on the same machine even with entirely unpatched NeoOffice 3.0.1.
However, I cannot induce this crash in TextEdit or Safari (or any other app I tried e.g. Firefox) on the same MacBook. These apps switch orientation immediately without having to re-select the page size. This is the only discernable difference I can see between actions in those apps and NeoOffice.
Second time, I tried re-orientating the page using the format>page menu before trying to invoke the change in Print settings, in case the problem was caused by the two orientations being "out-of-synch". Still required the re-selection of paper size before orintation actually changed ... and then Neo crashed anyway!
I've submitted these two new reports to Apple but I guess they might ignore them as they do not involve their own apps.
I'll perform the same steps on one of my clean installed office MacBooks on Monday (with NeoOffice 3.0.1 Patch 1) to see if I get the same crash on one of those. (The present MacBook affected was an upgrade from 10.4.+ direct to 10.6.2.) I'll report results here thereafter.
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pluby
The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 8:26 am Post subject: |
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| rays wrote: | | However, I cannot induce this crash in TextEdit or Safari (or any other app I tried e.g. Firefox) on the same MacBook. These apps switch orientation immediately without having to re-select the page size. This is the only discernable difference I can see between actions in those apps and NeoOffice. |
You mention that you need to reselect the page size when in NeoOffice. This makes me suspect that the page size is the trigger to the crashing. In the NeoOffice code, we try to set the native printer handle's paper size and orientation to match what the OpenOffice.org code has set for your document so that the native Page Setup dialog shows the same as what the Format :: Page dialog shows.
What I think may be triggering this problem is that the OpenOffice.org code allows you to set the paper to any size regardless of what sizes the printer actually supports. So the question is what paper size are you setting the document to in the Format :: Page dialog? If you set it to A4 or some other size that is listed in the native Page Setup dialog before you select the File :: Printer Options menu, does the crashing still occur?
Patrick |
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rayjay
Captain
Joined: Jun 15, 2007
Posts: 50
Location: UK
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 3:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Just to say that for me (Intel, 10.6.2: A4 as normal paper size and I've tried it with several others) the patch works smoothly, thanks. But I shall have learn to stop clicking the wrong OK button: I don't imagine there is an easy way of providing the option to bypass the Printer Options dialog entirely? |
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pluby
The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 5:22 pm Post subject: |
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| rayjay wrote: | | Just to say that for me (Intel, 10.6.2: A4 as normal paper size and I've tried it with several others) the patch works smoothly, thanks. But I shall have learn to stop clicking the wrong OK button: I don't imagine there is an easy way of providing the option to bypass the Printer Options dialog entirely? |
With the test patch, pressing the OK or Cancel button in the Printer Options dialog has no effect on the Page Setup dialog. So, if you press OK in the Page Setup dialog, the changes that you made in the Page Setup dialog will take effect whether or not you press OK or Cancel in the Printer Options dialog. Likewise, if you press Cancel in the Page Setup dialog, no changes to the paper size or orientation will occur even if you press OK in the Printer Options dialog.
Patrick |
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rayjay
Captain
Joined: Jun 15, 2007
Posts: 50
Location: UK
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| Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2009 1:17 am Post subject: |
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| Thanks Patrick. Yes, I had realised that - it's just that somehow my instinct was to click the wrong OK even though the right one was highlighted. |
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rays
The Anomaly
(earlier version)
Joined: Sep 23, 2004
Posts: 475
Location: Geneva, Switzerland
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| Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2009 11:56 am Post subject: Update |
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I've been unable to replicate this problem on a fresh install MacBook Snow Leopard at work so I begin to suspect this is may be an isolated issue on the locally affected MacBook. I'll try fresh NeoOffice preferences etc. to see if I can eliminate the cause. I'll post back here with any results or conclusions in a couple of days.
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Ray Saunders
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pluby
The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949
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| Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2009 12:57 pm Post subject: Re: Update |
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| rays wrote: | | I've been unable to replicate this problem on a fresh install MacBook Snow Leopard at work so I begin to suspect this is may be an isolated issue on the locally affected MacBook. I'll try fresh NeoOffice preferences etc. to see if I can eliminate the cause. I'll post back here with any results or conclusions in a couple of days. |
Since NeoOffice uses the native Mac OS X Page Setup dialog, you should delete the following NeoOffice native preferences file as this is the only preference file that native Mac OS X code will know about:
~/Library/Preferences/org.neooffice.NeoOffice.plist
Patrick |
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James3359
The Merovingian
Joined: Jul 05, 2005
Posts: 685
Location: North West England
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| Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2009 10:52 am Post subject: |
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With this patch I'm having trouble printing A4 sheets to an A5 page brochure. The steps shown in the wiki no longer seem to work, and I haven't yet managed to work out what steps are needed.
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pluby
The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949
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| Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2009 10:57 am Post subject: |
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| James3359 wrote: | | With this patch I'm having trouble printing A4 sheets to an A5 page brochure. The steps shown in the wiki no longer seem to work, and I haven't yet managed to work out what steps are needed. |
I will check this out later today and post again when I have found the alternate steps or have a fix.
Patrick |
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