This is a basic usability and convenience issue which is relevant to every average user and therefore should be fixed: In Options > LibreOffice > Advanced > Java Options in most cases the user sees only one item (Oracle Corporation ...) in the main window. As consequence of this the user is mislead to oversee that there is a very small circle which must be checked first to select the installed JRE...the user thinks the displayed JRE is already activated for LO. I believe this circle is not checked automatically if there is only one item in the list. Maybe this should be fixed. But at least the visibility of the checking control should be improved.
I believe the circle is a radio button to select what java machine is used. On my system (QT5/Breeze dark) it looks indeed just like a circle but when I uncheck java above the (now disabled) radio button becomes clear. needsDevEval: Please check that those controls are ordinary radio buttons.
Created attachment 127718 [details] Java disabled Qt5/Breeze dark
Created attachment 127719 [details] Java enabled Qt5/Breeze dark
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #1) > I believe the circle is a radio button to select what java machine is used. > On my system (QT5/Breeze dark) it looks indeed just like a circle but when I > uncheck java above the (now disabled) radio button becomes clear. > > needsDevEval: Please check that those controls are ordinary radio buttons. I think the problem is that we misuse radio buttons here. Radio buttons are usually used when at least one option must be checked. So there will always be a default selection which you can change to something else. But in this case, there might be no selection at all. Maybe a simple dropdown listbox would be a better fit in this case?
(In reply to Samuel Mehrbrodt (CIB) from comment #4) > But in this case, there might be no selection at all. Maybe a simple > dropdown listbox would be a better fit in this case? Really? Isn't the checkbox above used to disable Java, and the radio buttons below to select the version when the checkbox is active? If I'm wrong another entry "(o) None" (either as radio button or an item in the dropdown) would make sense.
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #5) > Really? Isn't the checkbox above used to disable Java, and the radio buttons > below to select the version when the checkbox is active? If I'm wrong > another entry "(o) None" (either as radio button or an item in the dropdown) > would make sense. Yes, but according to comment 0, there are cases where the checkbox is enabled, but none of the radio buttons is active. I also experienced this earlier, but have no quick way to reproduce atm. Maybe deleting the selected JRE from disk?
(In reply to Samuel Mehrbrodt (CIB) from comment #4) > I think the problem is that we misuse radio buttons here. Radio buttons are > usually used when at least one option must be checked. So there will always > be a default selection which you can change to something else. Yes i believe i've encountered times where i only had a single entry and it wasnt selected until i selected it. > But in this case, there might be no selection at all. Maybe a simple > dropdown listbox would be a better fit in this case? The simplest solution would be just to check if no selection is set and then select the first entry in the list. Also think that most users wont have more than 3 jre versions, so the widget definitely can be shrunk and maybe we can use the empty space to put other advanced option checkboxes.
(In reply to Yousuf Philips (jay) from comment #7) > Yes i believe i've encountered times where i only had a single entry and it > wasnt selected until i selected it. I think the (automatic) selection only happens when you use something that requires Java.
(In reply to Aron Budea from comment #8) > (In reply to Yousuf Philips (jay) from comment #7) > > Yes i believe i've encountered times where i only had a single entry and it > > wasnt selected until i selected it. > > I think the (automatic) selection only happens when you use something that > requires Java. Yes, opening the 'Advanced' options page causes a list of all installed Java runtimes to be obtained (and displays the selected one, if any, with a pressed radio button), but doesn't itself cause a Java runtime to be selected automatically. (Doing anything in LO that requires a Java runtime should cause one to be automatically selected, if none was already selected.)
Let's add a None radio button on top and select this by default.
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #10) > Let's add a None radio button on top and select this by default. The caption of that table reads "Java runtime environments (JRE) already installed:", so "None" looks like a wrong kind of entry for that table.
(In reply to Stephan Bergmann from comment #11) > The caption of that table reads "Java runtime environments (JRE) already > installed:", so "None" looks like a wrong kind of entry for that table. Okay, we could remove the checkbox "[ ] Use a Java runtime environment" in favor of the "(o) None" radio button and label the list "Java Runtime Environment (JRE)". Or remove this label too and use "(o) Don't use any JRE" instead.
The current logic in LO's code distinguishes two different states: the user having disabled use of Java vs. no JRE having been selected yet. Be careful when changing the UI in a way that would conflate those two states.
(In reply to Stephan Bergmann from comment #13) > The current logic in LO's code distinguishes two different states: the user > having disabled use of Java vs. no JRE having been selected yet. Be careful > when changing the UI in a way that would conflate those two states. And that's exactly the crux with None - it sounds weird because of this implementation. No complains to find a better term but ideally we do not distinguish between "No, I don't have Java installed" and "No, I have Java but don't want to use it".
I think all this is unnecessary to discuss and change. If bug 54443 is resolved that would solve Comment 0. And for the rest: do not fix what works. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 54443 ***