[Libreoffice-ux-advise] LO's styles are more confusing then MSO's (Was Re: some thoughts on the Sidebar)

[Mirek M.]

Hi Cor,

On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 5:04 PM, Cor Nouws <oolst at nouenoff.nl> wrote:

> Hi David,
>
> dollyp wrote (06-09-13 23:11)
>
>  <snip>
>>
>
>  Direct formatting is
>> less effective than using styles but LO's styles are if anything more
>> confusing to the average user than MSO's.
>>
>
> Hmm. would you mind to explain why that is the case, in your opinion?
>

I can't really compare and contrast with MSO here, but I'll give a few
examples of how things are unnecessarily complex now. Keep in mind that I
encourage use of hard formatting for things like bold/italicize. (Those
buttons could easily be style-based, though, similarly to how the <strong>
and <em> tags "replaced" <b> and <i> tags.)

So, without further ado:
* *Modifying styles is hard.* If someone took on this EasyHack, one could
modify styles quickly from the styles combo box:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62081
* *Targeting the style dropdown is hard.* Just filed a bug on this:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69549.
* *Setting styles takes too long. *Keyboard shortcuts are undiscoverable.
Again, just filed a bug on this:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69550. (We might also want to
consider other methods of fast access in the future, like being able to pin
styles to the toolbar, registering gestures, or using a contextual pie
menu.)
* *Making styles consistent can be exhausting.* This will be solved by
themes, if we ever get them.
* *There are too many styles.* Built-in styles should reveal themselves
based on context. If the user is using Headings 1-3, he doesn't need to see
Heading 10. Show only Headings 1-4 for him, show 10 only when he uses
Heading 9. If the user doesn't have images with captions, don't show the
Caption style. If there's no header, don't show the Header style. Just
filed a bug for this as well:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69551. Some of the styles we
have seem unnecessary to me, though.
* *The style combo box and the style sidebar have different
features.*Ideally, the sidebar should just be a docked duplicate of
the combo box.
Both should preview styles, both should activate them on single click, both
should list all the relevant styles, both should allow editing.
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