[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 88559] Display of inherited attributes from parent styles in Styles dialog

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=88559

--- Comment #16 from Christian Lehmann <christianw_lehmann at arcor.de> ---
As far as I understand, there are the following problems for the UI here:
1) How are unspecified properties of a style handled?
  a) How can the user leave the value for a selected property unspecified?
  b) What does it mean to leave an inherited property unspecified?
2) How can he get an overview that distinguishes between:
  a) values that he fixed for this style
  b) values that his style inherits from the parent (that he chose when
pressing 'New')
  c) values that remain unspecified and will be fixed only once a string thus
styled is embedded in a given context.

Ad 1: Several voices agree that pressing the 'Standard' button is both too
sweeping an action and not really intuitive if one just wants to leave one
property unspecified. (This doesn't entail, of course, that the button should
be removed.)
Couldn't the list of values enumerated for each of the properties comprise a
value 'none'? (Or alternatively a blank field?) As the user starts defining his
style, each properties tab would show, for each property, the value inherited
from the chosen parent, and otherwise 'none'.
a) The user could set the value of any property to 'none'. For a character
style, this would mean that the value is (not inherited from that style's
parent, but instead) assigned once a string thus styled is embedded in an
actual text.
In the tab containing the property in question, this selection of the user's
would keep being shown; i.e., Writer would not replace it by the current
default value, in order not to mislead the user about what he fixed and what he
left open.
b) Selecting 'none' as the value of an inherited property does not seem to make
sense. More in general, one may wonder what sense it makes for the user to
change the value of a property that is inherited from the parent that he
himself chose. To the extent that he changes the values of such properties, his
new style is not actually a child of the chosen parent. If he really wants
that, maybe LO should encourage him to step up the hierarchy in choosing an
appropriate parent. (As a side effect, such a constraint would greatly simplify
handling of the styles hierarchy.)

Ad 2): I think something like comment 6 would solve it for items #a and #b.
Nothing needs to be shown about item #c.

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