Useless and obtrusive Printer Options dialog box

[wheat]

This applies to NeoOffice 1.2 Alpha and all previous versions.

I have always found it very annoying that when I choose Print in NeoOffice, and the Macintosh Print dialog appears, and I instruct it to print a document (by hitting the "print" button in the dialog) that it is next followed by the NeoOffice "Print Options" dialog box, which requires me to look over a set of preferences that I never need to change, and then hit the "OK" button in order to print.

This is flat out the most un-Mac-like thing about NeoOffice. With every other application on earth, you hit Print and the document prints, with no interruptions.

With NeoOffice, you hit Print and then you have to negotiate a whole extra superfluous dialog box.

Many times in NeoOffice I have set up a document, hit Print, and gone for a cup of coffee, to return to discover that nothing has printed because I forgot that I had to wait for the secondary "Print Options" dialog and click "OK".

This is more than annoying.

I'm fully aware that the secondary Print Options dialog is a part of OpenOffice. But can't you figure out some way to bypass it in NeoOffice in consideration of the fact that NeoOffice needs to behave like every other Mac application with regard to printing?

Thanks,

[sardisson]

[wheat]

[rays]

[yoxi]

Okay, let's not get too excited here
Wheat, a simple way around this is:

• go to Tools->Configure in the menubar
• choose the Keyboard tab, and then:
• select the key combo you'd like to emulate the Print icon, e.g. cmd-shift-P
• choose Documents in the Category panel
• choose Print File Directly in the Function panel
• click on the Modify button
• click on Okay

This way, you've got a shortcut that emulates the Print icon, for those of us who want to keep the extra options dialogue associated with cmd-P.

If you want cmd-P to behave the same way your other mac apps do, then change the key combo allocations such that cmd-P is Print File Directly and cmd-shift-P is Print File - then cmd-P will bypass the OpenOffice.org Print Options dialogue, as the Print icon does. Don't you just love configurablilty?

- yoxi

[JCG]

To tell you the truth, I don't even know what to do (if anything) with that extra dialog box that I was getting when I went to print. I have just been blipping over it.

(Okay, I understand some of the options there, but what do I need that for?)

[sardisson]

I should have thought of that

Actually, since Wheat uses the menu, modifying the menu is the better option (but similar principles to yoxi's suggestion apply):

* Tools->Configure
* Menu tab
* Scroll down to Print in the "Menu entries" box and select it
* Choose "Documents" in the "Functions" / "Categories" box and click "Print File Directly" in the "Functions" box.
* Click "Modify".
* Double-click the new "Print File Directly" text in the 'left column' of the menu box and edit it back to "Print"
* Click OK.

Voilà, the menu now bypasses that options box. Note that unless you perform yoxi's steps, too, cmd-p will still bring up the 'print+options' method and will not appear as the shortcut in the menu.

Smokey

[rays]

Putting aside my earlier flippancy, I am quite attracted to the idea that Yoxi's modification combined with Smokey's menu modification could be incorporated as the 'normal beaviour' exhibited in NeoOffice on first launch as these together emulate typical Mac user expectations. Is that possible, Patrick? I think Smokey's would be stickable in the installer but I am not so sure about Yoxi's as that seems to be more of an individual user's preference? Then again, neither might be possible for NeoOffice to have as the installed default but I'll sleep better tonight knowing the answer, whether that be just two or three lettered?

[pluby]

[yoxi]

[rays]

[Baggypants]

Would it not be worth bunging it in the wiki?

It's easliy as good at the font replacement stuff

I'm loving the menu edit. Class!

[sardisson]

[wheat]

Thanks for all of these positive suggestions.

I never wanted to start a flame war.

Having started with the very first Macs in 1984, I'm a mouser.

Command-P? Back in the day we considered memorizing key commands as something that was for DOS users only. We looked down on it. Mac users had this new revolutionary thing called a mouse which used a new revolutionary thing called a pull-down menu, and that's how we executed commands.

Mac User magazine ran an article mocking DOS users around 1986. One of the jokes was "What's the first thing a DOS user does when he gets a new program? He memorizes the key commands."

I have never used "command-P" in my life.

To this day the only key commands I use are "cut", "copy", and "paste". Oh, and maybe "command-S" for "save".

If a dialog box comes up and you can choose "OK" by hitting the Enter key, I won't do that. I'll grab my mouse and click on the "OK" button.

From my mouse-and-menu-centric point of view, OpenOffice and NeoOffice does something glaringly un-Mac-like in printing. It's so glaring and jarring to me that I was surprised that other users weren't bothered by it. I understand now that other users don't see it that way because they don't depend on the mouse like I do.

I realize that I have reached the point in life where I am an old codger and a curmudgeon. And I'm only 41.

Sincerely,

[wheat]

Okay, the curmudgeon is angry now.

I tried sardisson's suggestion and modified the menu command exactly according to his post above.

Now NeoOffice crashes on startup. I cannot use the program at all.

I'm running NeoOffice 1.2 Alpha Patch 2 on Tiger 10.4.3 with all the updates installed. Apparently modifying a menu hoses the whole program.

Any ideas as to how to revert to the default menu settings when the program won't even launch?