[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Bug 141211] Bold (or Italic) icon (in Formatting toolbar) should not be active when "Strong Emphasis" (or Emphasis) character style is applied

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=141211

--- Comment #10 from Mike Kaganski <mikekaganski at hotmail.com> ---
(In reply to sdc.blanco from comment #9)
> (Not proposing any change here, just trying to understand the design
> intention).

Nice :-)

> > > Presumably even if it makes life more complicated for non-DF users?
> > 
> > Please explain how.
> Formatting bar shows the state of formatting, regardless of whether DF or
> applied by a style, so it is not always possible to use the toolbars to
> decide immediately whether a style or a DF is being applied.
> 
> For example, if custom CS “theoretical concept” has italic font, then
> Formatting bar shows the italic icon toggled, but I cannot see in Formatting
> (Styles) bar that I have applied a CS.

You are holding this wrong :-)

Your train of thought is like "it makes the use of DF toolbar more difficult
for style users when they decide to use that toolbar for what it is not
intended to do". So you basically start building expectations of a style user
regarding tools not directly intended for them.

This is wrong. Based on that reasoning, whenever you invent any tool for DF
users, you inevitably come to a situation when a style user *could* in theory
make use of such thing, *if* it were made differently - and so breaking the
intended ease of use for DF users. Just don't do that!

Now about the design intention.

All DF tools are created *primarily* for users who do not use styles. For those
users, the document does not consist of styled parts, it consists of characters
having some formatting. And they might not care, or might not even know, where
the formatting of a specific character comes from. Their tools must react
predictably *at their level of thinking about document*, and that means that
whenever a character is bold, the tool to control bold effect must suggest to
unbold it - which implies that it is shown "activated" (=applied).

Additionally, all DF tools work like paint: imagine a medieval painter who
might decide to update (fix something on) an older painting. Instead of trying
to remove everything from the old canvas at the changed site, they just paint
over, masking whatever is beneath the new layer of the paint. That is an easy
way for inexperienced users, and the tools designed for those users must be
convenient for that mode of thinking.

If you think that some tool on DF toolbar might be useful for style users if
modified, and that modification is harmful for DF users, you are welcome to
suggest a *new* tool e.g. on styles toolbar; it's wrong to think that not
modifying the old tool "makes life more complicated for non-DF users", when
their life is not more difficult now than it was before.

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