[Libreoffice-ux-advise] conditional format dialog

[Markus Mohrhard]

Hello Stefan,

2012/2/19 Stefan Knorr (Astron) <heinzlesspam at googlemail.com>:
> Hi Markus,
>
> before you go on implementing something like my proposal, there's a
> quite frank question from my side: How much time do you plan on
> spending on conditional formatting?

I can spend some time on it. As long as your proposal is reasonable I
will try to implement as much as possible from it and try to get it
into 3-6.

>
> Read on only if you intend to work on this for a bit longer.
>
> So... I've finally taken a look at how Excel's UI for conditional
> formatting looks/works, see [1] for a quite good overview of the UI
> available (I fully expect beatings for looking this up only now). So
> where do MS stand:
> #1 lots of ribbon menu items (to make sure most people don't see their
> MSO 2000-style dialogues)
> #2 a conditional formatting manager that only shows the conditions
> (and can be used to add/remove/reorder) – very importantly, this also
> shows the range you have applied conditional formatting rules on
> #3 rules editor windows for every single rule (that seems needlessly
> complex to me)
>
>
> I've kinda come to the conclusion that while my proposal improves the
> situation it is really somewhat over-simplistic. Here are the problems
> I see that aren't solved by it:
> * A conditional formatting rule always applies to a specific range,
> but currently there's no way to determine what range is covered by a
> rule without lots of trial and error. (This is a huge problem.)
> * Pierre-Yves is right: sequence does matter, so ordering is actually
> a really good idea, even if I don't like those up/down buttons very
> much.
>
> So, tentative plan:
> * add a dialogue similar to the Manage Names dialogue, but for
> conditionally formatted ranges – maybe even integrate conditionally
> formatted ranges into Manage Names?

No, please don't integrate it into Manage Names. These are totally
different features and should remain independant. The only thing that
should be moved into Manage Names is the Database Range Handling.

> * figure out a way to merge most of the functionality of the rules
> editor windows and the conditional formatting manager of Excel without
> this becoming a UI disaster – maybe a list with elements
> collapsing/being fully shown depending on whether they're selected
> like in the extension manager of LibreOffice would be a good idea.
> * integrate drag and drop ordering as well as an accessible form of
> ordering (so, probably up/down buttons)
> * at some later stage add a toolbar icon with functionality similar to
> Excel's ribbon menus – but that's mostly fluff, I think (maybe could
> be made an Easy Hack, dunno)


Ok, as long as you can show me a mock-up I'm willing to implement
something like that. I just don't like Excel's Dialog where you add a
new conditional format. Similar to our workflow with the range name
dialogs I suggest that we create a mack-up and then we'll see what can
be implemented and what is impossible/out of reach for this
implementation.

>
>
>> The vertical resizable should be no problem in this context because it
>> can be solved in the code and does not need anything from Caolan's
>> work. We implement already something in this direction in the range
>> name dialogs with the more button which resizes the dialog vertically.
>
> Sure, but additionally it would at least be nice if users could decide
> how large they'd like it.

Sure. But this is then a different issue. IMHO these are orthogonal.
The resizing of the dialog after adding a new entry should/has to be
done in code and the automatic resizing has to be done by the layout
manager.