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

[Regina Henschel]

Hi Francois,

Francois Tigeot schrieb:
> Hi Regina, all,
>
> On Tue, Jul 05, 2011 at 07:16:44PM +0200, Regina Henschel wrote:
>> Francois Tigeot schrieb:
>>> On Tue, Jul 05, 2011 at 05:42:43PM +0200, Regina Henschel wrote:
>>
>> I think, here we all agree. Paragraph and character styles are
>> desirable. The OOo issue is
>> http://openoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=19340, now more than
>> seven years old and 22 votes.
>>
>>>>> The inability to use style in Impress is a real turn-down but I'm afraid
>>>>> the problem is bigger than the developer's list.
>>>>
>>>> "Inability" is wrong, but the connection between master page and
>>>> presentation object style is not obvious and the handling can be
>>>> improved. To come up with a concept would be a task for UX.
>>>
>>> Why not just use the same style mechanism as in Writer ?
>>
>> Because nobody has implemented it. I see no reason in ODF.
>
> I'm not sure what do you mean here.

That's the problem, when I write in a foreign language.

  Would it be impossible to save
> text and paragraph styles in an .odp file because the storage format
> is not specified ?
> This shouldn't preclude work to be done in Impress proper to add support
> for them IMHO.

The file format allows styles to single paragraphs. But nobody has 
implemented it up to now.

>
>>> I can't fathom the fact that there are "character" and "paragraph" dialog
>>> boxes accessibles from a contextual menu in Impress, but the result
>>> can not be associated to a global style in the document.
>>
>> If you have the same setting for all paragraphs in a text, then a
>> style is possible. But you cannot have different appearances inside
>> one object via style.
>
> This is not clear either: I specifically want to use different styles for
> different paragraphs. What object are you speaking of ? The "master page" ?

There is currently no way to assign a style to a _single_ paragraph. But 
you can assign a style to a whole presentation object and to a whole 
graphic object. For example, you want to include a piece of code in font 
'Courier New' 16pt. Define a style for a text box using this settings. 
Assign this style to all the code snippets text boxes in your 
presentation. If you later on decide, that the code snippets should be 
in 'Lucida Console" 28pt, then you need only adapt the style and all 
those text boxes will follow.

>
> In Writer it is possible to define different paragraph styles and use
> them in the same page of text: titles, subtitles, citations, etc...

That is possible in Impress too. The only difference is, that Impress is 
divided into slides and you cannot mix different title-styles on one 
slide. But you normally have only one title per slide. I do not see the 
problem.

You have no style for a paragraph, but only for whole objects. But when 
you use graphic objects, you can make up a hierarchical structure of 
styles. For example, it is possible to define a style "text German" 
which inherits all settings from style "text" but the language.

>
>>> Consistency is very important; how can I be sure some categories of text
>>> (say shell command samples) can have the same formating in all the
>>> presentation ?
>>> Did the creators of Impress expect people to take a 80-slide document and
>>> tediously apply the same changes by hand in half of them, right-clicking the
>>> mouse 40 times to change the font of one of the text lines ?
>>
>> Use a style.
>
> Well, that's what I'm trying to do here ;-)

Currently you need to think in objects. A new style needs a new object. 
If you want a first line indent to the second paragraph by styles, you 
need to use one object for the first paragraph and a another one for the 
second paragraph. But that is again the lack of paragraph styles.

>
>> [...] But font settings work well with styles. Do
>> you have an example, where styles do not work for you, besides those
>> where you need different settings inside one text?
>
> Since my first mail, I've found out "Presentation styles" are more or less
> usable. Howewer, their use is very unintuitive: you have to use the left or
> right arrows in the toolbar ("Promote" or "Demote") and cannot simply change
> the style of one line of text from the Styles and Formatting window.

Presentation objects are always lists. So you can only change all lines 
of the same level together via styles. But there is no problem to set 
the first level to "blue" 32pt and the second level to "black" 24pt.
You might need to remove hard formatting (Menu Format > Default 
Formatting).

>
> The Presentation Styles are also associated with a rigid hierarchy and it
> doesn't seem possible to separate the presentation characteristics from the
> hierarchy level.

That is correct. That's due to the fact, that they are lists.

  How could I define two separate text styles for the "Outline 2"
> level (say, one with a red font and one with a blue one) for example ?
>

There exists only one presentation style per master page. If you need 
different appearances of "Outline 2" you have to use different master 
pages. You cannot have two different presentation styles on one slide. 
Do you really need it? I cannot imagine that it happens so often, that a 
hard formatting is unacceptable.

I found no issue in LibO bugzilla, but only one in OOo issuetracker. A 
next step would be to write a request in bugzilla and a draft spec, how 
it should work. I see several areas where LibO Impress can be improved: 
paragraph style, character style, numbering for text boxes, numbering 
position tab in style dialog.

Kind regards
Regina