[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Libreoffice] "Style And Formatting" window

[Christoph Noack]

Hi Caolán, hi all!

Am Dienstag, den 05.07.2011, 09:18 +0100 schrieb Caolán McNamara:
> On Tue, 2011-07-05 at 09:32 +0200, Cor Nouws wrote:
> > James wrote (05-07-11 07:56)
> > > When you turn on the "Style And Formatting" win with F11 in Writer, is
> > > it supposed to be open in Calc?
> > > I find it very annoying to be on in Calc.
> > > It is very useful in Writer but not very in Calc.

> Yeah, this bugged me for ages. Personally I'd like the style and
> formatting window in different modules like writer and calc to use
> different per-module settings for their position, docked/non-docked and
> shown/non-shown. As you say styles and formatting is far more useful in
> writer than calc, and I like styles and formatting to be shown and
> docked in writer, but not shown in calc by default, and when I do want
> to see it there I would like it to be a normal floating window.

Well, this question may open a can of worms, so to say. Omitting all the
explanation it finally leads to (from the user's point-of-view): "Is
LibreOffice an office suite that behave consistently and works with
different file types?", or "Does LibreOffice bundle several rather
separate modules?". Both approaches do have pros/cons - but it should be
clear, because it would solve lots of other questions.

However, I do understand the general idea ... although I think that we
should stick with a rather simple behavior to ease the understanding for
the users. Having too fine-grained individual settings might make things
worse, so here is the proposal:
      * per-module setting for shown / non-shown
      * default setting for shown / non-shown is kept
      * same behavior for all similar windows (e.g. Gallery, Database,
        Navigator, ...)
      * instead of a per-module setting for docked / undocked, these
        windows really need a closer button when docked (similar to the
        task pane in Impress).

Mmh, by the way, how does LibO handle if there are separate windows
(e.g. Calc) having different settings for such a window (e.g. docked /
undocked). Which one will be the new default if LibO is completely
restarted?

Thanks!

Cheers,
Christoph