[Libreoffice-ux-advise] borders UI (fdo#47194)

[Michael Stahl]

am a bit at a loss what to do about fdo#47194.

the problem is that it's no longer possible to set exactly the same
borders in LO since 3.4 as it was in older versions.

in the current UI it is now only possible to set borders that Word can
handle, which is 3 different single line and 11 different double line
styles.

OOo 3.3 supported 6 specific single line widths and 12 specific double
line widths; note i say line widths here because for every width the
relationship of the 3 individual parts of the double border are
hard-coded (whereas with the new borders they're flexible).

so it's currently not possible to set a border like the 1.1pt double
border in OOo that has 0.05 pt inner/outer lines and a fat gap in between.

of course that could be solved by adding yet more line styles, but i'm
afraid that will make the dialog even more cluttered than it already is...

another problematic aspect of the current UI is that the width can be
set independent of the line style, and nonsensical combinations are
possible, e.g. 0.05 pt only makes sense for single lines, not for double
lines; there should be a minimum gap between double lines as otherwise
you can't tell them apart.

in Word there are also 2 widgets for line style and width; the width one
is not a free-form text box but displays a set of predefined widths, and
the widths offered are apparently dependent on the line style selected.

guess if we had something like that we could have a "OOo compatible"
dummy line style in the UI that would create the specific double borders
that users of older versions are used to.

what do people think about these problems?

regards.
 michael