[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 132285] New: List of Feature Requests

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=132285

            Bug ID: 132285
           Summary: List of Feature Requests
           Product: LibreOffice
           Version: 6.4.2.2 release
          Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64)
                OS: Windows (All)
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: medium
         Component: Draw
          Assignee: libreoffice-bugs at lists.freedesktop.org
          Reporter: OpenMySourceCode at gmail.com

Description:
Hello friends,

I have a little bit of background before I get to the features I would like to
suggest (and even help to implement if someone is willing to pair up with me
since I'm new to the code-base). 

I'm working on building a computer and I'm trying to plan out the wiring and
components before I purchase the parts. I built a list of the parts on
PCPartPicker.com and scoured the internet for all the documentation I could
find. My plan was to draw up this wiring and connection diagram in LibreOffice
Draw but I ran into a few hurdles that made it not so user friendly for the
task. And frustratingly, every other software program I've tried that I have
access to has been even less helpful making Draw the ideal candidate for
drawing up these sorts of diagrams. 

So before I tell the story of how I ran into these issues, and list the
features I'm proposing, I want to preface this with a note that these features
may already exist but if they do, then their discoverability then is what I
would suggest improving and would love to discuss, and as I said before, I
would love the opportunity to work with a more experienced developer to make
them more accessible. 

So first onto the list, and then an explanation of what I was doing that made
me want these features and how they might work if implemented:

1. Lock Item - A button near the corner of a shape or image or object that
locks it in place, prevents it from being resized, and requires double clicking
in order to select. Also a button in the toolbar/sidebar that will lock the
item and maybe a similar button in the navigator for the object, layer, or
sheet would make that feature more accessible. 

2. First Class anchor point object - an object point that can be placed on the
canvas that is otherwise identical to other objects except that it has an
anchor point in the center to which lines, curves, sides, etc can be anchored
(just like the anchor points on any other object) but otherwise without a
visible presence on the final printed sheet.

3. Coordinate Locking - The ability to lock certain sides or points of one
object with other objects, but especially these anchor point objects. The idea
behind this is that a shape will resize or a point will move in the direction
that two elements are locked, so for example, if I have a square and a point,
and I have a line between them, and another line 90 degrees from that line to
another point, and I lock the x axis of the square and the first point, then
the line between the first and second point will extend or shrink, but if I
move the square along the y axis, then the point will not move and the line
between the point and the square will shrink or extend. 

4. Selection of object from Navigator - Currently, when clicking on an object
in the navigator, it does not select the object on the canvas, or at least the
selection is not visible on the canvas. 

5. Custom Shape Palette - This is a much bigger feature with some sub-features.
The idea is another artboard on the canvas that contains custom shapes that the
user has drawn. When these shapes are selected and dragged to the primary
artboard, they automatically duplicate. To actually remove the shape, you would
select it and then use any delete function (key, menu option, etc) to remove it
after confirming in a dialog box that you wish to do so. Additionally, a
repository would host user submitted palettes that could then be downloaded
from within Draw, shown on the canvas, and then shapes used automatically.
Their sizes would be fixed in mm/inches and a scale option would exist in the
artboard properties to scale the objects up or down. There would also be a
"help" feature when right clicking in case there's any documentation in
markdown or HTML. File-wise, these would be standard draw files with a
different extension (oddt?) as well as the md/html file for the "help"
sub-feature.

6. Add Visible/Invisible switch - Add a Visible/Invisible icon switch for each
item in the navigator to hide or show objects, whole layers, or even whole
pages. Hidden objects would not be considered in the exported or printed
version of the document but would be available in the saved drawing. Gimp,
photoshop, and many other drawing programs have this feature and it's very
helpful for them and I think it would be helpful to LO Draw as well. 

7. Add a set of buttons to the Navigator - Make it so that the navigator has
buttons for adding objects, moving the order of objects (such as an image),
adding layers, adding pages, etc. Also a context menu that can do these things.

8. Fix color theme inconsistencies - Right now, there are several icon sets
bundled with LibreOffice that will show white/light icons for "dark mode" but
there is no darkmode setting. Additionally, there is a theme color option but
it only affects the menu and some other widgets but not the toolbars, it also
doesn't affect the tabbed bar background color where the light colored icons
are located. At least it doesn't on Windows.

9. Crop Tool When automatic proportions are enabled - For this one, I had the
wrong setting selected but basically when cropping an image while the automatic
proportion setting is enabled, the preview of the crop shrinks or grows
proportionally but then when the crop is completed it seems to behave the way
you would have otherwise expected it to only cropping that side or corner to
the position you placed it. The preview telegraphing should match with the
behavior of the tool.

10. Allow Selection Rect inside another shape - As it stands, if you try to
select shapes that are inside of another shape, using the rectangular select
tool, it will not do it, instead the initial click will select the enclosing
shape and the only option to fix it is to move the shape out of the way while
you work on the "inner" shapes. This isn't ideal as it requires clicking on
each shape while holding shift to select them and also if the shape has an
opacity of 0 fill, you have to click on what might be a VERY thin pixel width
border which is very difficult to do right. A wrong click will select shapes
you didn't intend. 

11. By Default, Selecting a tool, and then clicking on a shape expecting to
drop a point of the shape you're building should not cancel the tool, and turn
the cursor into a "move" tool of the underlying shape. I'm trying to trace an
image of a processor to add to my diagram but everytime I click on a point on
that shape with the polygon tool, I instead get out of whatever mode I was in
to draw that polygon and can only select the shape underneath and move it. And
worse, the only way to get out of that and back into the tool (really
frustrating if you're zoomed in on a small detail) is to select a blank spot on
the page. 

12. Renaming, Title, and Description should be editable from the Navigator
without opening dialogs. Basically there should be a panel in "Properties" for
the name, title, and description. Also, if you double click on an object in the
Navigator, it should allow you to rename the item. 

I ran across these issues while I was trying to trace over images of parts
after scaling them to their actual size on the page. The selection rect and the
tool selection issues both are because there's a shape underneath but that
shouldn't be an issue (which is the reason for 1, 4, 10, and 11) I kept
accidentally selecting and moving things I didn't mean to (items 4, 6, 7, 10,
and 11). When building the wiring diagrams themselves, I ran into the issue of
how to manually place the bend points of the connectors and decided that
drawing 3x3 squares at each 90 degree bend and anchoring to the center and then
making the squares disappear was the solution but then moving those around
presented other problems. I believe anchor point objects that can be axially
locked to the shape they connect to would help (items 2, 3, 6, 10, and 11). The
navigator seemed promising but selecting an object in there didn't select it on
the canvas (items 4, 5, 6, 7, and 12). I looked around in the settings for help
but to no avail, nor could I activate a dark mode to make the UI easier on the
eyes (items 8 and 11). 

Thankfully LibreOffice is Open Source (hence the name). So I figured maybe it
wouldn't be too difficult to download the sources, and write these features
myself but after gitting the sources from the git repo, I realized I had a
massive undertaking on my hands and that's just in looking around and learning
the codebase. If this feature request is accepted, or even partially accepted,
I would love the opportunity to participate in writing the code that will
implement them. 

Thank you so much for making the time to read this feature request.

Gino Vincenzini

Actual Results:
N/A

Expected Results:
N/A


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No



Additional Info:
Version: 6.4.2.2 (x64)
Build ID: 4e471d8c02c9c90f512f7f9ead8875b57fcb1ec3
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 18363; UI render: GL; VCL: win; 
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI-Language: en-US
Calc: CL

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