[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Bug 137214] Add "Color Replacer" to Writer (currently it only exists in Draw/Impress)

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=137214

--- Comment #2 from Rafael Lima <rafael.palma.lima at gmail.com> ---
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #1)
> Would prefer to keep Writer clean of rarely needed functions. If you need to
> modify images external tools or Draw are just better suited.

Hi! I would like to respectfully disagree with your opinion.

I understand that "Replacing Colors" is not a functionality that is frequently
used in text documents, but "Setting a Transparent Color" in images is
something that users often need to do.

When one downloads an image from the internet, it often comes with a background
color that the user wants to set as transparent. It happens to me very
frequently and what I do is exactly what you said: I open Gimp and edit the
image externally.

The problem with this approach is twofold:
1) It adds a long second step to setting the transparent color of an image,
requiring the user to keep additional files in his/her computer;
2) Using an external tool to set transparent colors require a certain level of
technological knowledge of how images work that most people simply do not have.
For example, my mom knows how to set a transparent color in Word, but she has
no idea what an alpha channel is. She can't even name an external image editor
that can perform such a task.

So, my suggestion to add this tool to Writer seeks to (i) improve convenience
while editing documents, making it much faster to do a simple task and (ii)
give less tech-savvy users the ability to set a transparent color in images.

Moreover, I don't think the Color Replacer would bloat LO Writer. It could be
placed in the "Image -> Filter" drop-down list (I am using the Tabbed
interface). Or it could be added to the Image Properties sidebar, below the
Color Mode.

Another alternative would be to implement a single button in the Image
Properties sidebar where the user can set the transparent color. Hence it would
be a simpler implementation of the Color Replacer Tool.

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