[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Bug 157292] Consolidate Text should maintain vertical and horizontal placement of lines after consolidation

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=157292

Eyal Rozenberg <eyalroz1 at gmx.com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Summary|Consolidate Text should     |Consolidate Text should
                   |maintain vertical placement |maintain vertical and
                   |of lines after              |horizontal placement of
                   |consolidation               |lines after consolidation

--- Comment #11 from Eyal Rozenberg <eyalroz1 at gmx.com> ---
(In reply to Stéphane Guillou (stragu) from comment #9)
> Here is another test file, including character and paragraph formatting, as
> well as text box formatting, to have the full picture.

Good example to think about this problem, yes.

> * (Noting that paragraph and character formatting _is_ conserved. Not text
> box formatting.)

Not exactly. That is, think of the horizontal endpoints of the text in the top
textbox. If you consolidate it with the one below it - the paragraphs don't end
at the same place, they end near the right edge of the combined textbox. So,
the "right indent 0" is maintained, but not the right edge of the paragraph. If
that were maintained, the vertical positioning of the text from the first
textbox would also be maintained.

> * Hoping to conserve relative position of the different pieces of text is
> unrealistic. Your example uses the specific case of two text boxes that
> happen to be left-aligned and that don't overlap in their X and/or Y
> positions. 

Well, that is a trickier case, yes. However, if we supported negative vspace
before paragraph, it would be possible (and easy)


> But in other cases, consolidating will involve LTR boxes that are
> not left-aligned and that would end up in an overlap.

Why does the left-aligning matter? That's a paragraph-level feature.

> * If we were to somehow implement what you are asking in a manner that
> accommodates the above, the original paragraph formatting would have to be
> amended with a new custom value for Below or Above Paragraph Spacing – which
> would then propagate to new inserted paragraphs.

It would, yes.

> This means that it could go
> _against_ the expectation of someone joining two text boxes in order to have
> a more consistent document with equal spacing of paragraphs.

1. We are in Draw, not Writer. I might have accepted this line of reasoning
there
2. The user knows they've consolidated text in a way which maintains vertical
(and horizontal) positioning, i.e. that they get slightly "contorted" settings
to make that happen. If they want a consistent text box with equal spacing etc.
- they can clear the DF we introduce, very easily. But if we make things simple
and consistent, the user can't, without significant effort and basing
themselves on good memory, reposition the content.

> (i.e. "Why did
> this keep the wrong spacing? I wanted to get something consistent!")

"Why? Since it looks the same as before the consolidation."
"I want something consistent. This has a bunch of DF originating in PDF
placement and textbox consolidation; let me clear the DF and set my own
formatting"

> Whatever the feature was designed for in the first place, it is not used
> exclusively for PDF editing (even though it's particularly useful for it, as
> the documentation says[1]) and it would be bad to break existing.

So, Stuart made the opposite argument. I think the behavior I suggest is better
fore the feature as-is: Maintaining rather than losing information.

However, if we can sketch out an non-PDF-import use case when Textbox
consolidation is supposed to act differently - then perhaps we could have
either two version of the command's behavior, e.g.:

* Post-command-application baloon widget, a-la the paste options balloon in MS
Office, or
* Simply two commands, e.g. "Consolidate" and "Consolidate Text" or whatever
* A "maintain positioning?" dialog box

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