Impress simple multiple display specification

This page exists to make a spec for issue 12719. (Other specifications can be created using the Specification template)

This specification is for a simple enhancement to Impress that would allow selecting the display for full-screen presentations. A related specification for enabling better control of the presentation from another screen is Impress presenter mode specification.

Any discussion of the specification should happen in the issue, or on the discussion pages.

Current status of the implementation is at Impress multiple display support.

Impress

Document - ID	Specification Owner	Last Change	Status
	DavidFraser	2005-12-15	Draft
Conforms to
Applies to	sd, vcl
Task ID(s)	12179
Category	Feature

Abstract

More and more graphics cards support more than one monitor simultaneously. These can either be configured as one large screen (which on X11 is called Xinerama mode) or multiple independent screens. Especially for presentation it would be preferable for the user to be able to configure on which single monitor or on which range of monitors his presentation should be played.

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

	Name	E-mail Address
User Experience	Mathis Dirksen-Thedens (MDT)	ooo@jesusfan.de
Development	David Fraser	davidf@sjsoft.com
Quality Assurance	<Name + Initials>
Documentation	<Name + Initials>

Document Change History

Rev. Level	Change	Initials	Date
1.0	initial version		2005-06-10
1.01	added many texts	MDT	2005-06-28
1.1	Added more detail about presenter view, and possible improvements to it. Mike Dark - khelmar@gmail.com	MJD	2005-08-26
1.11	ported to this new wiki (pre-split)	JWP	2005-12-02
1.2	split into simple and presenter mode specs	DF	2005-12-15

Glossary

Term	Description
dual head	the ability to have two separate display devices configured (which together form the desktop)

Motivation

Currently Impress will always display a full-screen presentation on the primary display. If there is a secondary display such as a video presenter, it is often required to display on this display, which is currently difficult or impossible.

User Scenarios

User has a projection system, with a dual graphics card. One output is connected to a monitor that is visible only to the presenter. The other output is connected to a video projector. The user will display the actual presentation on the video projector, while simultaneously being able to view and access the standard document editor window on the monitor. One example is during church worship services, where it is desirable for the operator to search through the slides of the presentation without disrupting the display of the current slide to the congregation.

Goals

Provide a robust and easy-to-use dialog, to allow the user to both select which monitor to display the "main" presentation on.

Requirements and Dependencies

Requirements

Many requirements are already met, but someone needs to put the pieces together...

Technical Dependencies

Not known.

Competitive Analyses

MS PowerPoint has this feature and in many forums it is named as the key reason why people can't use OOo instead.

In order to be complete, the presenter view would be required as well, but simply being able to select the display for now would allow output onto a video projector from laptops, which would make it at least feasible to use OOo in this scenario.

Detailed Specification

This feature includes a dropdown box in the "presentation options" dialog in which the user can choose on which display the presentation is to be shown. This box contains values like "Screen 1" and "Screen 2". The choosable values are adjusted to meet the present situation, e.g. when the second screen is disabled, the user can only select "Screen 1". The selection only matters for fullscreen presentation.

The consequence of the user's selection in the above mentioned dropdown box is that the presentation is shown on the selected screen/display device, but still in fullscreen mode.

String list

Item	English	German	Swedish	Comments
Dropdown Element	Screen 1	Bildschirm 1	Skärm 1

Error Conditions

If the secondary screen was selected, but afterwards the user edited the system settings to have only one screen, the presentation is shown on this primary screen. No error message needed.

Migration

Not needed.

Future Tasks

None at this time.

Notes

To come.

References

http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=12719

http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=19080 (and many other forum posts over the whole web)

http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?p=86445#86445 (temporary workaround for Linux users)