Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 61133
Automated conversion of text into cross-reference/hyperlink
Last modified: 2014-03-24 19:40:12 UTC
Any large document would typically contain a lot of images, tables, etc. When the user has to refer to these in his text, he has to insert a cross-reference. In a large document, considering the large number of cross-references, this work would be huge. Moreover, insertion of links does not excite the author, as it does not require any creativity whatsoever. In fact, it is quite a boring, repetitive, and error-prone job for the author. Writer can elliminate this labor and take the tedium out of the job, by providing a facility to convert phrases like "Figure xxx", "Table yyy" etc. into a hyperlink containing the cross-reference field. The concept is similar to how THIS website converts "Issue xxx" into a hyperlink automatically. Note that there are two parts of this requirement: (a) Convert the plain number "xxx" into a field (b) Convert the entire phrase (e.g. "Table xxx") into a hyperlink. Each of these has its own advantage: (a) The Fields would update automatically when tables/images/etc are added/deleted. On the other hand, a MANUALLY inserted number may get quickly outdated; and the user won't even know about it.. (b) The user does not have to insert the cross-references (fields) manually. For a large document, this is a huge saving in effort. This can be done in two different ways: 1. Convert as you type (like spellcheck, capitalization, etc) 2. After finishing the writeup, the user launches a wizard, which scans the document and shows each entry. For each, the user decides whether to convert it or skip it. This would work exactly like how the "Find and replace" dialog works.
Reassigned to requirements.
What's the next step? Would this be added to a distilled list of requirements?
A.) This feature improves the interactivity of OOo. I propose a new keyword for such issues, e.g. OOoInteractivity. B.) I would like to extend this concept further using a web-example. An increasing number of users write in the wiki-format. This number is likely to increase even further, as numerous businesses migrate their internal documents to various internal wikis. I would like to create cross-references using the wiki-style: 1.) create link: [[where-to-link 'text-to-be-displayed']] IF 'text-to-be-displayed' is omitted, then 'where-to-link' should be displayed 2.) create anchor/bookmark [[a:'anchor-name' 'text-to-be-displayed']] IF 'text-to-be-displayed' is empty, than an invisible anchor is created 3.) one can later add further parameters to these auto-cross-reference methods There is also the possibility to use classical html-codes (like <a> for anchor), but the formaer method seems more appropriate because more people know about the wiki-format and this format is also very attractive for businesses.
Confirmed with AOO410m14(Build:9760) - Rev. 1573062 2014-03-01_04:11:01 - Rev. 1573123 Debian