Minutes of the Design Hangout: 2014-11-05

Jan Holesovsky kendy at collabora.com
Thu Nov 6 09:02:05 PST 2014


* Present: Heiko, Jay, Kendy, Samuel, Steve
 
* Completed Action Items:
    + Kendy: Dropdown for the line spacing instead of the 3 icons (reuse
      the sidebar dropdown).
        https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=83076
    + Adolfo: Update the icons for removing documents in Start Center
        https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/582
    + Samuel: Create an easy hack - describe what tables should be
      striped, and how to do that in the code
        + The striped rows don't work anymore - need to fix that first:
          https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85900
        + Will create the easy hack when it works again
 
* Pending Action Items:
 
    + Kendy: Push patch to default to large icons even on Windows.
        + Hey, wait: not everybody agrees! (Adolfo)
        + You can never have 100% agreement; the conclusion in one of
          the calls was to try it, collect feedback (if there's any),
          and revert for the release if we see too much objection
          (Kendy)
    + Heiko, Jay: Think of a survey about icon sets; how to measure
      which to include?
        + the technical solution would be best here, not package the
          icon N-times (Kendy)
        + no really easy way to measure (Jay)
            + Crystal - used by people on OS X
            + Industrial - used as fallback for many icon sets; but we
              are not packaging it
AI      + instead create Easy Hack for images.zip layering (if it does
          not exist yet) (Kendy)
AI      + at some stage, we can think of Easy Hack for downloading
          additional themes too (Kendy)
 
* UI changes integrated the last week:
 
    + Added/modified tango, sifr, human, and oxygen icons (Jay)
    + Copied tango_testing's chart and styles/properties icons to
      tango (Jay)
    + Finally finished the rework of the line spacing dropdown, now in
      the Writer's toolbar (Kendy)
 
* Last week's discussions that need a resolution:
 
    + Accept or Reject Changes... vs. List of Changes... (Cor / Jay)
        + https://www.libreoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=85046
        + lots of nice improvements!
        + there were inconsistencies - so that it can be shared between
          menu and toolbar (Jay)
            + needed cleanup
        + but the primary goal of that dialog is indeed accepting /
          rejecting (Kendy)
        + sophie suggested 'Manage Changes'
            + like it (Kendy)
            + like it too (Samuel)
AI          + Rename the entry to "Manage Changes..." (Jay)
        + would be good if the "Manage Changes" was a sidebar not a
          dialog... (Heiko)
AI          + let's propose it GSoC task... (Kendy)
 
    + Where to put "New Style" in the new drop-down approach (Cor / Jay)
        + https://www.libreoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=85415
        + above the More Styles... or in each submenu or both?
        + wonder if we are not creeping features here? (Kendy)
        + but useful if we want to encourage people to use styles (Jay)
            + so that the people do not have to go to the sidebar to
              create styles...
            + then I guess it's better to have both (Kendy)
        + Samuel has a plan wrt. listed styles
            + List custom and used styles (and the predefined ones)
AI          + will create a bugreport for that (Jay)
        + conclusion: OK to have both
 
    + Should sidebar return to its previous state after keyboard
      shortcut is pressed (Cor / Jay)
        + https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85791
        + For many users, they are used to pressing F11 to open it and
          F11 a second time to close it
        + would like it to hide by F11 (Kendy)
        + so should we do that for everything? (Jay)
            + like eg. gallery - when you click it when it is show, hide
              it again?
                + I'd like it (Kendy)
        + various corner cases - open sidebar, but all decks closed,etc.
            + we should try to return to the state it was (Jay)
            + depends on how easy is to do that - probably best to do
              the easiest first (Kendy)
AI      + Samuel can have a look, but not immediately
 
    + Cor added to the agenda "Jay and me discussed the idea to maybe
      collect the to be created improvements on e.g. Calc to be able to
      commit those (or the most) in  one release. Might be the 4.4. when
      in time, and if not, the 4.5. Creates less confusion for users
      etc."
        + we have the time based releases (Kendy)
        + what's in master gets to the release, if something proves to
          be too broken, either should be fixed during beta phase, or
          hidden as an Experimental feature (Kendy)
        + no point in doing any pre-selection too early (Kendy)
 
    + Simplifying alignment labels (Jay / Maxim)
    + https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85825
    + removal of the words align, vertically and horizontally from
      alignment buttons
    + Maxim suggests to add "Align" to Writer too, like "Align Left"
      etc., original suggestion was the other way around (to remove
      "Align" in Calc)
    + But seems a good idea to add the verb (Heiko)
        + In general, would be good to have "Verb Subject" forme in the
          toolbars
    + Like self-descriptive way (if it is not 10 words) (Kendy)
    + competitive analysis: MSO uses "Align Left" etc., Calligra too
AI  + conclusion: Update Writer, Impress + Draw to include "Align"
      too (Jay)

* New line spacing drop down look (Jay)
    + It looks quite out of place and would idealy be better to have
      a simplified version
    + https://bugs.freedesktop.org/attachment.cgi?id=108268
    
    + too much information there (Jay)
        + no other office suite provide this much
        + suggesting to remove the Custom Values part, and instead have
          a 'More...' button
        + 'More...' should lead to the 'paragraph' dialog -
          Indent/Spacing tab
    + just converted what was in the sidebar :-) (Kendy)
        + so if there is some follow-up work
        + but don't have that much time for further tweaking :-( (Kendy)
        
    + no icon for 1.15 (Jay)
        + easy enough to do that in the .ui file (Kendy)
AI      + Jay will update svx/uiconfig/ui/paralinespacingcontrol.ui
 
* Updating references on sort (Kendy)
 
    + https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85584
AI  + set to false for now (the old behavior) (Kendy)
    + might be good to be able to set it while sorting (Kendy)
        + but probably no time for that before the feature freeze
 
* Hiding of cut, copy, paste buttons from the writer's standard toolbar
  (Heiko, Jay)
 
    + https://www.libreoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=84909
    + published the survey?
    + survey results
        + agree with removal - jay, heiko
        + not agree with removal - cor
    + interpreting the results of the survey: 70% agree that some change
      can be made (Heiko)
        + includes the "Yes, but keep Paste" answers
    + if we do that, in all the applications together (Jay)
    + possibility: one menu button for all the clipboard functionality?
      (Heiko)
        + suggested at some stage
    + result: Still not conclusive enough unfortunately (like 30% of
      people who are using only the keyboard still do not want to remove
      that, etc.), so no change for 4.4
        + let's get stats from the new user information stats + see
 
* Hiding of paragraph background (Jay, Heiko)
 
    + published the survey?
    + agree hiding - jay, heiko, cor
AI  + result: Let's hide it before the feature freeze, and see. (Jay)
 
* Removing the Line Spacing and Style entries from the context menu
  (Jay)
 
    + https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=81132
    + With line spacing now in the toolbar, we can be removed the line
      spacing submenu
    + With the empty space in the toolbar, we could add strike through,
      superscript and subscript to the toolbar and this would eliminate
      most of the usage in the style submenu
    + let's postpone till the next release, the Line spacing is new in
      the toolbar (Jay)
 
* Sidebar in Writer (Samuel)
 
    + Show only the icon bar by default?
        + useful as they would see the icons which were removed from the
          toolbars (Jay)
        + the idea was to keep it visible during development (Samuel)
    + actually connected to the screen size (Kendy)
        + sidebar unusable on 1024; somehow usable on 1280 (Kendy)
        + yes not likely to be used by users of 1024 -
          https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=82943#c3
              + but now that styles/formatting and gallery are only
                accessible from it, they will have to use it if they
                need those
    + most of functionality in the toolbars (Samuel)
    + show just the buttons - sounds like a good idea (Jay)
    + won't affect the users with the small screen (Jay)
    + would be good if clicking the button again hides the deck (Heiko)
AI  + Will hide the decks, but keep the sidebar (only the icons) there
      (Samuel)
AI  + Add Close menu entry in the sidebar's menu that acts like
      View -> Sidebar toggle (Samuel)

Regards,
Kendy



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