[Libreoffice] Applying style and formatting changes immediately (WYSIWYG)?

[myLC at gmx.net]

Dear programmers,


I've been using OpenOffice extensively for years and now with Oracle going
bonkers (as usual) of course I switched to LibreOffice instantly.
In my opinion the biggest letdown are modal dialogs for changing styles and
formatting. I've used Papyrus Office, even though it is far more primitive,
a few times for that specific reason.
Frequently the documents you work on consist of only a few pages. Often it's
just one. Changing borders, line-spacing, font and kerning to make the page
look best is an everyday task. With OO (now LibreOffice) you have to open
dialogs, make the changes blindly, click OK and see what you get. Then you
have to return and reopen the dialog, etc. until the result fills your needs.
With Papyrus and its modeless dialogs you can see the result instantaneously.
It is so much more convenient! WYSIWYG - once you get used to this it
becomes a pain going back to the time consuming "open dialog", "close dialog"
- redo from start exertion.
I have four cores running at well above 3 GHz. Reformatting a document "on
the fly" takes them just a millisecond. Such a task could be handled semi-
modeless already using the undo-features. Large documents on slow computers
are the exception and should be treated like this. If changes cannot be made
instantaneously (say within X seconds) you can simply disable (uncheck) that
feature.
LibreOffice really shouldn't go on without modeless WYSIWYG dialogs for more
versions. This would be an outstanding change - and as I said, using the
undo-feature it could already be implemented (poorly) without that big a
hazard.

I hope you take this into consideration. I thank you for your work on such a
great office product! It really is best in almost every other aspect.


Yours sincerely,
                        LC (myLC at gmx.net)