[Libreoffice] LO status bar annoyances

[Sebastian Spaeth]

Am I the only one finding the current status bar pretty much useless?

About the only thing I actually use there, is the zoom slidebar (and I
wouldn't use that if I were able to have a single "set 'optimal' zoom
button in my toolbar which doesn't seem possible).

- What annoys me most is the "document modified indicator". If it is
  unmodified, I see some *empty* separators in the status bar (why do we
  show empty separators? these should GO GO GO away) and the mouse
  tooltip over the *empty* separator says "this document has not been
  modified". When I type, I get a document with an exclamation mark, and
  the tooltip changes to "this document has been modified".

  a) This is  the standard state of my documents (see,  I tend to modify
     docs in  a editor,  DOH), and that  exclamation mark  purports some
     sense of urgency and failure.

  b) We warn when closing a modified doc anyway, so there is no need to
     always warn me and use up precious space. I propose to just do away
     with it.

- I have to single-click on the INSRT and STD->EXT->ADD->BLK and
  language selection thingies, but to double-click on the Page 1/1 and
  "Default" for something to happen. I just found out by coincidence
  today that I can launch some action for the latter.

- Despite being a heavy writer user, I have no clue what EXT/ADD/BLK
  mean, or what they are being used for (so I never use it). They have
  no tooltip whatsoever to give me a clue either. The toolbar help
  button unfortunately launches the generic help, rather then the more
  useful "what's this". In a "what's this" mode, I do see a tooltip help
  (why not always????), saying this is about the selection mode. What
  the selection mode EXTEND, ADD, or BLOCK are, I have still no clue
  about. Perhaps a right-click on that thing could offer to open a more
  elaborate help page? (keep the tooltip always in any case).

  And more fundamentally, do people really change the selection style in
  their documents to something else? Ever? Does this really require a
  statusbar item?

  Help text: Anyway after much search I found the entry in the help page
  that refers to that feature. I only had to "what's this" the item, to
  get to know about "Selection Mode" and search the help until it
  discovered the "selection modes in text" item. It has very useful
  help. BLK means: "A block of text can be selected.". /me slaps
  heads. How could I not know!!1! (err, can't I select a block of text
  with the STD as well? How dot they differ? But that's a topic for
  another day :).


- Randomly trying out things and clicking on an empty area in the status
  bar, brought up a dialog window titled "Fields" which offered me to
  insert the "Author"->"Name", if I get it right (playing a bit dumb
  here). It also has a checkbox for "Fixed content" (who doesn't want to
  fix there content, but that is also for another day). Anyway, clicking
  (actually double-clicking required this time) on an *empty* area
  should not open mysterious dialog boxes.

Where in the code is that collection of mysteries being placed on the
statusbar and should I file bugs to put this rant into :-)?

Sebastian
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