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

[Christoph Noack]

Hi Astron!

Only short, because I'm already gone since half an hour ;-)

Am Mittwoch, den 07.09.2011, 21:54 +0200 schrieb Astron:
> 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?

That has several (sometimes historical) reasons, e.g.:
      * StarOffice 3.0 had a more complete "object-oriented" approach
        which drove users nuts. So some features have been removed
        during the OOo times (I still miss overloading of character
        styles, sigh).
      * ODF might not provide the required functionality (should be
        checked).
      * Compatibility requires to have this or that capability
        (especially in Impress, styles behave weird because of
        PowerPoint compatibility).
      * ...

> > 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.

Need to think a bit about that...

> 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.

Well, I'm sure inheritances can be communicated to the user ... but that
will need some deeper thinking. Currently, the representation via
hierarchy view or the styles "management" tab is a bit lame.

> Regards,
> 
> Astron.

A pleasure to discuss stuff with you :-)

Cheers,
Christoph


> [1] By that, I don't mean everything should be copied, only the
> behaviour of the two buttons.
> [2] They are powerful, though.