[Libreoffice-ux-advise] to duplicate an existing style

[Regina Henschel]

Hi Astron,

Astron schrieb:
> Hi.
>
>> An important exception is the page style. You cannot build hierarchies of
>> page styles. But for page styles the properties are not copied to the new
>> page style, so that you have to start from scratch. So there is a deficiency
>> in page styles: you have neither linking nor copying.
>
> Why does this software have to be so inconsistent all the time?

This software lives already 15 years.

>
>
>> I guess, that adding "Copy" to the page styles will be easier than adding a
>> linking feature. But I have not examined the code.
>
> Could it be a good idea to just copy Scribus's behaviour [1]? It gives
> you buttons for
> [New]     [Clone]
> [Import]  [Delete]
> where "New" always creates a new empty style (that is, a copy of the
> default style)  and "Clone" creates a copy of the currently selected
> style (btw, I like "Duplicate", as initially proposed by Olivier, much
> better as a name for the button). Inheritances can then be defined
> later on.

You need inheritance from the beginning to fill the fields with the 
inherited values. That there is no visual distinction between inherited 
and set values is a different problem.

I would like to get the linking feature to the page style too, so that 
e.g. changing the margin in the parent style will also change the margin 
in the child style. Often there are only little differences between 
parent and child.

You can it see the other way round too. Cloning is first "new with 
inheritance" and then "breaking the link".

For inexperienced users, both cloning and linking should be shown, so 
that he has the chance to learn, that there is a feature "linking".

"Import" would be nice, because it is now hidden in the document 
template organizer.

> Ultimately, I don't think inheritances are very intuitive [2] and
> there is probably not a very good way to present them to the user, so
> we might as well try to keep them out of the hands of at least
> inexperienced users.

Those inexperienced users will not use styles, far less create own styles.

I have learned just, that cloning is already possible for page styles, 
but it is in a wrong place, see 
https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=12339

Kind regards
Regina