[Libreoffice-ux-advise] 9 LibreOffice Features You Should Avoid Using

[Mirek M.]

Hi Samuel,

On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 6:40 PM, Samuel Mehrbrodt <s.mehrbrodt at gmail.com>wrote:

> http://www.datamation.com/**open-source/9-libreoffice-**
> features-you-should-avoid-**using.html<http://www.datamation.com/open-source/9-libreoffice-features-you-should-avoid-using.html>
>
> What do you think about these? Maybe a good start to create some new
> EasyHacks?
>

Some of them, definitely.

I'll give my thoughts on each one here:

*Heading Levels*
This should be fixed by a better default template that actually
differentiates between the last few headings and by only showing 3 headings
in the style picker by default, showing the 4th only when the 3rd is used,
the 5th only when the 4th is used, etc.
The former should be relatively easy and we'll work on it.

*Font Effects*
Blinking should be removed and documents with blinking text should render
it non-blinking, following in the footsteps of the deprecated <blink> tag
it was there for.
I don't mind embossed, engraved, outline, and shadow. I could imagine there
would be compatibility problems if they were removed (e.g. it would be
impossible to remove this formatting from older documents, which would be
bad).

*Justification Options*
I agree that Left is the only reasonable option here (though I'm surprised
Right isn't an option, but I suppose there's some kind of hack for RTL
languages) and I hope the other options fade into obscurity because of
their low-profile placement in the Paragraph dialog. Removing them, though,
would cause compatibility problems.

*Graphic Bullets*
I hope this feature will be removed. (There's always the option to switch
to the font-based bullets, so I'm not worried about compatibility there.)

*Tab Indentations*
Here I disagree -- tab indentations can be very useful, and using an
invisible table instead would just complicate things.

*Fill Characters in Tables of Contents*
Still an important feature, but we should redesign it so that the eye
doesn't have to move to the other end of the page -- changing the default
to position the page number before the article name would be good. Just for
inspiration, here are various ways to design a table of contents:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/07/07/table-of-contents-creative-and-beautiful-examples/
BTW, the Table of Contents dialog should really be redesigned, at least the
part where its structure is defined -- it's a usability nightmare.

*Heading and Footers Boxes and Shadows*
I'm glad this isn't a default, but I don't mind it being there, think that
there could even be good designs with boxes, and, again, I think removing
this feature would cause compatibility problems.

*The Gallery*
Should be more useful when we replace the default content.

*Backgrounds and Borders for Paragraphs and Characters*
Character background = highlighting, no? I would say highlighting's
important. Paragraph borders and background aren't as important, imho, but
could still serve a useful purpose. While the writer recommends using text
frames, there are disadvantages to that approach as well. It takes more
effort to create text frames, it removes the text from the main text body,
and text frames can't be defined with styles -- each frame has to be added
manually.
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