Minutes of the Design Hangout: 2014-10-15

[Jan Holesovsky]

* Present: Heiko, Hillar, Jay, Kendy, Samuel, Steve
 
* Completed Action Items:
 
    + 'More Options' for insert table, 'More Fields' for insert field
      and 'More Styles' for styles drop down
 
* Pending Action Items:
 
    + Samuel: Create an easy hack - describe what tables should be
      striped, and how to do that in the code
    + Kendy: Find somebody to transfer articles from redmine wiki to TDF
 
* UI changes integrated the last week (Samuel):
 
    + [last week] Changed the Insert Field button to dropdown-only:
      https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=84550

        + Do we want a split button?
            + originally opened the dialog
            + then changed that the default action inserted the page
              number
                + comes from the Insert toolbar update - where he was
                  creating group buttons (Jay)
                + probably the situation is here a bit different - the
                  functionality more distributed (Samuel)
                + stats: insert page number 50%, date 15%, More... 15%,
                  page count 10%, time 5%
            + now similar to the table - changed to just drop down only
                + like that it is similar to the table (Kendy)
            + problem with the icon
                + not descriptive (Jay)
                + not an issue to have the Page icon, if that's the most
                  used functionality anyway, and then have it first in
                  the list (Kendy)

AI          + Conclusion: Update the icon, and keep the dropdown (Jay)

    + [last week] Styles dropdown

        + Previews the background color too now
        + Changes font color when it's too close to the background color
        + Flat menu button - just the triangle is shown, button on
          mouse-over
        + should styles also show text alignment, as it would be useful
          when the drop down is added to the sidebar? (Jay)
            + tricky question :-)
            + it is a small dropdown - so wouldn't be much visible (Samuel)
            + punt after it's in the sidebar? (Jay)
            + sounds it could be usable (Heiko)

            + Conclusion: Will not block a patch for that if somebody
              implements this - but not a priority for the moment

    + [last week] Styles+Formatting floating dialog removed, will now
      always open in the Sidebar (as the Gallery)
        + what happens when when the sidebar is not visible? (Kendy)
            + it will open the sidebar (Samuel)
            + there's a small bug if you hide the sidebar a special way,
              then it will not show up (Samuel)
                + but bug filed (Jay)

    + [this week] hiding of paragraph level background color button in
      formatting toolbar (Jay)

        + Jay hid it in http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=affe79b5a920a2aa0bc284e918c96aa0379c5efb
          and Kendy enabled it in http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=bb29c5723a6053476b6f398c8550b2a839aa07fc
        + reasoning for its hiding
            + most users do not set paragraph level background color, as
              it colors more than the space taken up by characters
            + users will be confused between character background color
              (aka highlight) and paragraph background color (aka
              background color)
            + other word processors that dont have paragraph color in
              toolbar/sidebar - iwork pages, abiword, wps/kingsoft
              writer, calligra words, wordperfect, ms word 2003, google
              docs
            + most S/W don't have the func to set the paragraph color
              that anyway (Jay)
            + confusing - 3 buttons; what each of them does? (Jay)
                + it is wrongly labeled - it's a paragraph color (Jay)
            + the highlighting is confusing too - it is not what Word
              has as the 'Highlight' feature (Kendy)
            + concern about hiding functionality - if it is used, we'll
              get fire ;-) (Kendy)
            + it aligns better with the 1st row of buttons when hidden (Jay)
            + looks better
                + http://i.imgur.com/keUX5SK.png vs. http://i.imgur.com/8IMHRzp.png

AI          + Conclusion: Kendy will try to see how hard it is to turn
              the 3 spacing buttons to 1 dropdown, keep the background
              color for now, and measure.
                + there is a drop-down already in the sidebar (Samuel)
                + good, will try to re-use that (Kendy)

AI  + Heiko: File a bug about better description of tooltip (sidebar - spacing).
        + "Increase Spacing" should be "Increase Paragraph Spacing",
          same for decrease

* Removal of cut, copy, paste buttons from writer's standard toolbar (Jay)

    + https://www.libreoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=84909
    + No way before we measure this ;-) (Kendy)
        + in MSO, Paste is the biggest + most prominent button in Word,
          I bet they have a reason for that (yes it is a large icon to
          show emphasis, as paste is the number one used function in any
          word processor)
              + Yet again, the need for a combination of big+small
                toolbars arises (there was a GSoC project
                (https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/index.php?title=Development%2FGSoC%2FIdeas&diff=89030&oldid=88966 ),
                why was it removed? (Adolfo)
        + please note that the https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Tracking_results
          are for Impress, not Writer. (it is for all modules Kendy :D)
    + iWork Pages and all Mac OS applications don't have cut, copy, and
      paste buttons in toolbars
    + People that agree with this proposal: Mirek, Daniel, Samuel,
      Heiko, Tor, Astron, iplaw67, mjayfrancis
    + People that oppose: Jean-Baptiste Faure, Adolfo Jayme, Cor Nouws,
      Matthias Freund
      https://www.libreoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=77261
      https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/boards/1/topics/3?r=60#message-60

    + Heiko can run a survey - old vs. new toolbar
        + problem with the interaction (Jay)
        + easily doable (Samuel)
        + question can be "what do you use", but also "what is
          acceptable to you" (Heiko)
            + or "do you agree with removal of this or that" (Heiko)
        + Heiko + Jay will propose questions to ask in the survey
        + pasting as unformatted text is very helpful (Samuel)
            + one of the options is to remove the cut and copy, but
              leave paste (Samuel)
                + I like this proposal! (Kendy)

AI  + Conclusion: Heiko + Jay will come up with a set of questions for
      the survey, and we'll review it at the next meeting
 
* Collecting the user information (Kendy)
 
    + prototype: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=35da89fa1428f5286304fc707252242554d49ea6
    + data collection
        + see what / how Mozilla is doing it
        + hopefully we could re-use the code of the server part?
            + http://blog.mozilla.org/metrics/2011/08/25/do-90-of-people-not-use-ctrlf/
            + https://testpilot.mozillalabs.com/
    + no real progress since the last time, Kendy busy