[Libreoffice] [UX] Some dirty stuffs around styles in calc

[Christoph Noack]

Hi Cor,

I totally missed to answer your mail ... kudos to the little red
exclamation mark (but, not within the status bar, of course *g*).

Am Dienstag, den 07.12.2010, 13:34 +0100 schrieb Cor Nouws:
> Hi again,
> 
> (after a short lunch, a second thought ;-) )

Well, as I said, I had some in the meantime ...

> Christoph Noack wrote (06-12-10 23:54)
> 
> > Example 1.1: Simple Dialog
> >
> >          If a protected cell style shall be changed, a dialog is raised
> >          to explain that it is used on a protected sheet. Nothing can be
> >          changed (or even viewed). The user has to un-protect the
> >          sheet(s) first.
> 
> Of course most important! and as well easiest, I guess

It might be the easiest (local optimum), but we will stumble across such
issues over and over. And they will require to re-think how we currently
handle not so important messages, important messages, and also how to
revert changes we apply automatically. Thus, we should consider a more
"global optimum" IMHO.

> > Example 2.1: Workflow Optimized Solution
> >[...]
> >          What might be checked with users and within common workflows:
> >          Does it help if - if the protection has been disabled
> >          temporarily - that the protection may be re-activated again when
> >          a) saving the file, or b) asking the user when he attempts to
> >          close the document.
> 
> In most (if not all) of the cases, protection of cells means that the 
> owner wants people to fill in data, and not to rework the sheet.
> So I start wondering how often people that need to fill a form, should 
> be asked/allowed to change styles.
> Of course, the initial feed back is very important, so that people 
> realise what is going on, and do not need to start a debug session ;-)

I see this a bit different - for those who are really working on such
forms, it would be a big help. The other "users" of these sheets (or
whatever document) might simply benefit from a more reasonable
explanation. To me, it is not that much about the styles, but also to
(e.g.) fix a simple typo ... this can drive people nuts.

For the users, it might be simple helpful to provide a request to work
with the form ... Adobe Acrobat does a nice job, here.

Cheers,
Christoph