[Libreoffice-ux-advise] Proposal to limit border widths to 4 values

[Michael Stahl]

On 07/06/13 06:20, Markus Mohrhard wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> so after some time I'm back at the border code to fix some problems
> with the mappings between OOXML and Calc values.
> 
> I mentioned already the last time that in my opinion the only solution
> in the end would be to limit the choice to 3 or maybe 4 values. Hair
> line, thin, medium and thick which would improve interoperability with
> MSO and hopefully make the UI a bit simpler. Right now we have an
> unlimited number of border widths and together with all the
> combinations of border style I doubt that we will ever get all cases
> correct.

i'm afraid 4 values are not enough.  would be ideal for MSO interop, but
we also want to interop with other ODF implementations; notably OOo and
AOO have a bunch of pre-defined border styles that may be used in lots
and lots of existing documents.  users likely want to edit those
documents and then be able to add borders that look just like the ones
already in the document for consistency.

> Right now the only problem I see with this solution is that ODF's
> border concept is similar to our current implementation and we would
> need to find an acceptable mapping between values stored in ODF and
> our limited border widths. However I hope that in the long run it
> would simplify our code and improve the user experience.

i think that currently the borders UI is overly flexible; something
simpler is probably a good idea.  like several line styles, and for each
line style several pre-defined widths that match what is commonly used
in MSO documents to get good interop there.

UI that allows setting arbitrary widths in 1 twip increments is really
overkill.  we will perhaps get some complaints from users that have used
this flexibility in the past several LO versions but i'd hope there
aren't many who are really using this.

but we should have a bunch of predefined border styles for legacy OOo
compatibility in the UI in all applications.

perhaps also have different styles available in different applications;
for Word interop we need a lot more fancy styles that don't really make
sense in a spreadsheet; perhaps allow only one width per line style in Calc.

> Code wise I think it would solve many issues at once. Currently we
> have several roundtrips between double and integer and calc and writer
> use different units for border widths. These problems should hopefully
> disapear with a limited number of fixed width borders.

hmm the different units problem is unlikely to disappear.