Bug 35359

Summary:	FORMATTING: Hanging indent in bulleted lists works strangely for list levels > 1
Product:	LibreOffice	Reporter:	Tommi Nieminen <tommi.nieminen>
Component:	Impress	Assignee:	Not Assigned <libreoffice-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED INVALID
Severity:	normal	CC:	sasha.libreoffice
Priority:	medium
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
Crash report or crash signature:		Regression By:
Attachments:	Writer Indent Problem slide with list Test showing the bullets and numbering problem

Description Tommi Nieminen 2011-03-16 09:00:52 UTC

The following applies to most Impress styles but not, as far I can see, the default plain style at its default values.

The usual way to format bulleted lists is with hanging indent so that the bullet of level n+1 is positioned where the text (not taking the bullet into account) of level n begins. Also, for a multi line item, the text should be left-aligned.

In LibreOffice (and OpenOffice.org before that) this is extremely tricky to achieve because of an intricate interplay between the values under bullets and numbering and the values under paragraph formatting, both of which take a part in determining the outcome.

DEMONSTRATION:

Select any presentation style equipped with LibreOffice (I used “Acryl” here which is available by default at least in LibreOffice 3.3.1, OOO330m19 (Build:8), in openSUSE 11.4).

Create a new slide with “Title, Content”. Add some text for the first bullet, press Enter, then press Tab to add a second level.

Now look at Format | Bullets and numbering > Position tab. First select level 1 to see the values for the first level. Indent = 0.12", numbering alignment 0.35". Thus, you would expect that the second level indentation were 0.12 + 0.35 = 0.47" to align it with the text of the first level.

Select level 2. Indent is actually 0.63" and numbering alignment 0.31". But here’s catch: the first value has actually very little to do with the actual formatting as seen in the slide, because for an obscure reason paragraph formatting *also* sets indentation values. The actual value is (judging by the ruler) almost 1.3".

Now look at the paragraph formatting: Format | Paragraph > Indents & Spacing. “Before text” is 0.94", “First line” -0.31". This adds up: 0.63" + 0.94" - 0.31" = 1.26". The interplay between the numbers is still extremely complicated for an average user to understand.

Try changing the values so that we get hanging indent in the usual sense. The first level is indented 0.12", then there’s 0.35" space for the bullet = 0.47". If we want to keep the 0.31" space for the second-level bullet, text should begin at 0.47" + 0.31" = 0.78".

If we set 0.78" to the “Before text”, the bullet begins at 1.1" which is = 0.78" (the “Before text” value) + 0.63" (the “Indent” value in Bullets and numbering) - 0.31" (the “First line” value in paragraph formatting).

So let’s change Indent to 0.0" under bullets and numbering. It actually seems to work: the second-level bullet aligns with the first level text, BUT if the second-level item has more than one line, the second-line text begins at about 1.15"!!!

Let’s try the other way around: set Indent to 0.47" (the indent + numbering alignment of the first level) and “Before text” to 0"; this forces “First line” to 0" as well. Now we actually DO achieve a hanging indent just as intended. But was it easy? NO.

/DEMONSTRATION

I guess you see the point now. An industrious mathematician would probably quickly calculate the values s/he needs to fill in but the average user is at a loss. I needed to use a pen, paper and a calculator to do what I wanted to do – not an ideal situation when the resulting formatting should actually be the default, and if not, easily achieved without adding up lots of numbers.

My suggestion: Only ONE set of numbers should be used to regulate the formatting of the bulleted lists, otherwise it remains an advanced art to get decently formatted presentations out of LibreOffice.

Comment 1 dhirenjani 2011-03-18 16:11:40 UTC

Created attachment 44600 [details]
Writer Indent Problem

Indent for bulleted list does not work correctly in libreoffice writer

Comment 2 dhirenjani 2011-03-18 16:13:37 UTC

The problem of indent values for bulleted list being impacted by ruler and paragraph is visible in LibreOffice Writer 3.3
Additionally, the "paragraph" indent values are not displaying properly for the list, as can be seen in the image.
I found this bug number relevant, let me know if a new bug report is needed.

Comment 3 Björn Michaelsen 2011-12-23 11:45:24 UTC

[This is an automated message.]
This bug was filed before the changes to Bugzilla on 2011-10-16. Thus it
started right out as NEW without ever being explicitly confirmed. The bug is
changed to state NEEDINFO for this reason. To move this bug from NEEDINFO back
to NEW please check if the bug still persists with the 3.5.0 beta1 or beta2 prereleases.
Details on how to test the 3.5.0 beta1 can be found at:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/BugHunting_Session_3.5.0.-1

more detail on this bulk operation: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/RFC-Operation-Spamzilla-tp3607474p3607474.html

Comment 4 sasha.libreoffice 2012-01-20 08:08:21 UTC

problem in Writer explained here:
Bug 34573 - FORMATTING paragraphs params behave wrong in list
Please, tell: it is the same problem or another

Comment 5 sasha.libreoffice 2012-01-20 08:36:17 UTC

Created attachment 55836 [details]
slide with list

I have attached presentation where is list where all items of list has the same properties, but paragraph indents are different. It is expected that paragraph properties will not move bullets, but actually they move.
This differs from MSWord 2010 where "Indent before text" moves text and bullet, and "Indent first line" remains bullet on it place and moves only text.
If I understand problem wrong, please, explain.

Comment 6 Tommi Nieminen 2012-01-21 01:18:56 UTC

I still haven’t tested this in LO 3.5 beta. However, in 3.4.x the behaviour of lists is strange and unpredictable in both Impress and Writer.

Firstly, the “compatibility settings” seem to alter the behaviour of lists and even the dialog boxes controlling them, so the end result is different if these settings differ. This is probably Writer-specific.

Secondly, lists are formatted using both the paragraph indent values and the values set in Numbering and bullets, but in a hodgepodge way I cannot make sense of. This happens both in Impress and in Writer.

Thirdly, in Impress, the whole list formatting seems to break down at times. (I have a slideshow where the Bullets and numbering dialog box claims all the list levels have a RED bullet. In reality, only the first level has, the other ones are white. Changing the bullet on level 2, for instance, to red on a one-by-one basis succeeds, but as a side effect the bullet on list level 1 now turns white. And so on.)

Comment 7 sasha.libreoffice 2012-01-23 00:53:01 UTC

> I have a slideshow where the Bullets and numbering dialog box
Please, if there are no secret information, copy-paste that slide into new presentation and attach it here.

Comment 8 Tommi Nieminen 2012-01-23 07:36:51 UTC

Created attachment 56040 [details]
Test showing the bullets and numbering problem

(In reply to comment #7)

> Please, if there are no secret information, copy-paste that slide into new
> presentation and attach it here.

No secrets here... The attached presentation is from one of my courses. I left three slides in place (there were almost a hundred to begin with), and added some test bullets in the first and the last slide. Testing was done in Arch Linux with LibreOffice 3.4.5 OOO340m1 (Build:502).

As you should see, the first level bullets are light red, second and greater level bullets white. That can be changed bullet by bullet in the normal view (i.e., not even level-by-level but literally bullet-by-bullet).

Now try to change the bullet colours globally from the master slide: View > Master > Slide master, then Format > Bullets and numbering. Colour seems to be set to “Automatic” for all levels and the preview pane actually shows *black* bullets for all levels. Changing the colour to light red for levels 1–10 doesn’t change anything when you OK the dialog box.

Now go back to the dialog  and select only level 2 and set the colour to light red. What happens is that level 1 changes to white while all the other levels *remain* white!

(This last step might behave differently depending on what you did before. At least once, for me, the dialog box claimed that all the levels now had light red bullets, which they actually didn’t, so trying to change them to light red was of course not going to work anyway.)

One last one: I tried the same at work where I have stable Debian 6.0 and older OpenOffice. There the bullets *were* light red to begin with so it seems different versions of OO.o/LO might even show the same file differently.

Comment 9 sasha.libreoffice 2012-01-23 08:03:15 UTC

Thanks for attachment!
As I see, Impress allow set list options for each paragraph. Therefore I can set different options for each item in list. And if I want change all list, I must select all it previously.
I do not know if it is bug or feature. Resembles that feature.
And when attempt to save to ppt or pptx, formatting is lost.

Comment 10 Florian Reisinger 2012-08-14 13:58:48 UTC

Dear bug submitter!

Due to the fact, that there are a lot of NEEDINFO bugs with no answer within the last six months, we close all of these bugs.

To keep this message short, more infos are available @ https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/NeedinfoClosure#Statement

Thanks for understanding and hopefully updating your bug, so that everything is prepared for developers to fix your problem.

Yours!

Florian

Comment 11 Florian Reisinger 2012-08-14 14:00:02 UTC

Dear bug submitter!

Due to the fact, that there are a lot of NEEDINFO bugs with no answer within the last six months, we close all of these bugs.

To keep this message short, more infos are available @ https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/NeedinfoClosure#Statement

Thanks for understanding and hopefully updating your bug, so that everything is prepared for developers to fix your problem.

Yours!

Florian

Comment 12 Florian Reisinger 2012-08-14 14:04:42 UTC

Dear bug submitter!

Due to the fact, that there are a lot of NEEDINFO bugs with no answer within the last six months, we close all of these bugs.

To keep this message short, more infos are available @ https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/NeedinfoClosure#Statement

Thanks for understanding and hopefully updating your bug, so that everything is prepared for developers to fix your problem.

Yours!

Florian

Comment 13 Florian Reisinger 2012-08-14 14:06:49 UTC

Dear bug submitter!

Due to the fact, that there are a lot of NEEDINFO bugs with no answer within the last six months, we close all of these bugs.

To keep this message short, more infos are available @ https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/NeedinfoClosure#Statement

Thanks for understanding and hopefully updating your bug, so that everything is prepared for developers to fix your problem.

Yours!

Florian