[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 138658] UI: Confusing categorization of the 'Hidden' feature

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=138658

--- Comment #10 from Mike Kaganski <mikekaganski at hotmail.com> ---
(In reply to Christian Lehmann from comment #8)
> Font effects comprise, presently: font color, text decoration, case, relief,
> outline and shadow. All of these are attributes that show on every single
> character so formatted, modifying its shape.
> Hiding a passage of text - and I repeat, including entire sections of a file
> - is not something that modifies every character of that text. It is
> conceptually different.

1. First of all, I *hope* that you don't question that the hidden setting
belongs to *character properties*. If not, then please state directly.

2. The Font Effects tab combines several character-level settings that modify
the basic appearance of the glyph of the font selected on Font tab. These two
tabs together define the resulting appearance of the *glyph* completely. In
theory, they could be combined into a single tab, but it would be overloaded
with tens of settings, and hence the division.
   The other tabs define other character-level settings. Position does not
modify how the character glyph looks like, but defines its positioning relative
to other characters. (Okay, horizontal scaling does modify the glyph, but being
tightly related to the fitting of the text into available space and to the
positioning of the text relative to other parts, a decision should had been
made where it belongs more, and so it was put here). Hyperlink tab has quite
special obvious meaning (I hope). Highlighting controls not the glyph, but the
area (background rectangle). Borders naturally control the borders of the said
rectangle.
   Now the question is why would you argue that making the glyph invisible is
*not* changing the appearance of the glyph. From my PoV, it perfectly is. And
thus it fits into Font Effects tab just fine. Note that you are free to modify
every character with this setting individually if you need. Note also, that in
LibreOffice, *character-level* properties are applied to text runs, as opposed
to paragraphs as a whole (the latter is paragraph-level properties).
   Again, this is a character-level property *on DOM level* (that you had
mentioned). And thus it must be on the character properties dialog anyway - so
if you like, you may suggest where, on which tab, *on that dialog* you think it
would fit best.

3. Note that paragraph-level properties include all character-level properties,
and thus you may define hidden on paragraph level. This is obvious in Paragraph
Style dialog, but unfortunately hidden in paragraph's direct formatting dialog.
Now consider that when you select whole paragraph(s), and apply any formatting,
that formatting goes to paragraph level. That is still the same property. Maybe
you are confused by the fact that you don't see the Font/Font Effects/etc. when
you choose Format->Paragraph? That's something to discuss, but in general I
agree with usefulness of *existing* UI, where Character dialog may control both
character-level and paragraph-level formatting at the same time, depending on
selection (consider selecting last half of paragraph 1, whole paragraph 2 and
first half of paragraph 3, and modifying properties; they will go to 2
character-level settings applied to text runs in paragraphs 1 and 3, and to 1
paragraph setting for paragraph 2, at DOM level). Doing otherwise would make
users confused much more. But it makes it not obvious, on which level is a
setting is defined which you see in the dialog (unless you use Style Inspector
in v.7.1).

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