System-Settings

OpenOffice.org 2.0

Document - ID	Specification Owner	Last Change	Status
	Oliver Braun	10.08.04	Final
Conforms to	N/a
Applies to	all modules
Task ID(s)	i20364, i20369, i33580
Category	Feature

Abstract

One of the most annoying tasks for a user is if he has to enter common application settings into every application over and over again. Most desktop environments have a notion of shared application settings, so being a good citizen for OpenOffice.org 2.0 means here to read and honor settings the user has already entered into the desktop.

i-Team Members (The specification owner is part of the i-Team)

	Name	E-mail Address
User Experience	Falko Tesch (FT)	ft@openoffice.org
Development	Oliver Braun (OBR)	obr@openoffice.org
Quality Assurance	Thorsten Martens (TM)	tm@openoffice.org
Documentation	Uwe Fischer (UFI)	ufi@openoffice.org

Approved for Implementation

	Approved by	Date
User Experience	Falko Tesch (FT)	30.08.04
Development	Oliver Braun (OBR)	30.08.04
Quality Assurance	Thorsten Martens (TM)	31.08.04
Documentation	Uwe Fischer (UFI)	31.08.04
String Review	Falko Tesch (FT)	02.09.2004

Document Change History

Rev. Level	Change	Initials	Date
1.0	Initial draft	OBR	10.08.04
1.99	Final release	OBR/FT	02.09.2004
1.100	Add migration task id	OBR	03.09.04

Contents

Glossary	1

1	Motivation	1

2	User Scenarios	1

2.1	Consistent behavior of all applications	1

2.2	Network environment profiles	1

3	Goals	1

4	Requirements and Dependencies	1

4.1	Requirements	1

4.2	Technical Dependencies	1

5	Competitive Analyses	1

6	Detailed Specification	2

6.1	Proxy settings (Windows/GNOME)	2

6.2	Preferred email client (GNOME only)	3

6.3	G11n	3

6.4	Error Conditions	4

6.5	Migration	4

7	Future Tasks	4

8	Notes	4

9	References	4

Glossary

Term	Description
Gnome	See http://www.gnome.org for more details

Motivation

To reduce the bad user experience of a “Error ..., please check your configuration” message for settings that could be read from the system.

User Scenarios

Consistent behavior of all applications

If a user switches his/her preferred email client, applications not following this switch occur broken except the user has set different manual settings in this application. However, reading the system setting is the expected default.

Network environment profiles

Some desktop environments support network environment profiles, which allow the user to switch between different internet connection types and proxy settings very easily.

Goals

The goal is to provide an extensible framework to read desktop specific user settings, starting with

Proxy settings (Windows/GNOME)

Preferred email client (GNOME only)

Requirements and Dependencies

Requirements

Of cause reading any of those settings can only be supported in desktop environments which have such kind of settings.

Technical Dependencies

This feature only applies to OpenOffice.org 2.0 running under Unix/GNOME or Windows.

Competitive Analyses

MS Office uses always the Windows system setting as the proxy and preferred mail settings.

Detailed Specification

Proxy settings (Windows/GNOME)

New Option (default)

In OpenOffice.org 2.0 under “Tools – Options – Internet - Proxy” a new entry will be introduced in the “Proxy Server” drop-down listbox: System

This entry will be only available under Unix/Gnome and Windows systems. OpenOffice.org 2.0 will automatically hide this entry whenever it detects that it does not run under these two systems.

In case one of the two systems are hosting OpenOffice.org 2.0 the new entry “System” will became the default. This only applies to a standard installation of OpenOffice.org.

Any change done by the user will result in a permanent, different setting.

The new entry “System” will automatically read-out the current system setting and will use them. The check on these setting will only be done once the complete office suite has been (re-)started.

In case System is chosen the read-out setting are displayed in a inactive manner in the settings fields. This way the user will have a transparent knowledge on what settings are currently in use.

Figure 1 New menu entry "system"

String list

Item	English	German	Comments
List box Item	System	System	

Manual Settings

If the user formerly has chosen different manual entries and changes to “System” setting the old values must not be overwritten but stored in the configuration data. This way the user can easily reverse the setting by simply changing back from “System” to “Manual”. In this case the last stored data fro the setting “Manual” will be reverted.

Migration Issues

In case the user installs OpenOffice.org 2.0 with the migration option from an existing OpenOffice.org 1.x (which has no “System” setting) the appropriate setting/values (“Manual” w/ user settings or “None”) will be used instead of the new default “System”.

Transfer of Configuration Settings

In case the configuration settings from an OpenOffice.org 2.0 running under Gnome or Windows is transferred to an installation running under a different system OpenOffice.org 2.0 will fallback the following way:

Check for any entries made in “Manual” mode and install them as the new default if available.

If the above does not apply use “None” as the new default.

In the reverse case OpenOffice.org 2.0 will always fall back to the new default “System”.

Preferred email client (GNOME only)

Starting with release 2.4, GNOME users are able to specify an email client in their “Preferred Applications” preferences.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 will used as this specified value as the default setting for the “Tools – Options – Internet – Email” setting.
Figure 2 E-Mail tab setting w/ default entry read from GNOME configuration

Tab Order

n/a

Key Board Shortcuts

n/a

G11n

N/a

Error Conditions

N/a

Migration

See “Transfer of Configuration Settings” at 6.1 Proxy settings (Windows/GNOME) section. The migration task is covered by issue #33580#.

Future Tasks

In future releases an integration in other systems is advisable (KDE etc.)

Also dynamic updates from the GNOME settings should be possible.

Notes

none

References

N/a

System-Settings

Page 4

Http://specs.openoffice.org/appwide/system_settings/System-Settings.sxw

System-Settings

Oliver Braun

2004-08-10T15:52:33