Created attachment 140990 [details] Sample text referenced in bug description demonstrating poor visibility of index entries in the document Working with index can be frustrating because of poor visibility. In attached document three index entries are defined however there is no visible hint to locate them. The behaviour documented here is observed in Writer 6.0.2.1 and earlier versions. Turning on field shading helps a little bit. Very small shaded areas give a hint. But try to find all three... There are only two shaded fields, the third one has disappeared. I give you a hint: look before the bold words. If no success delete the tab in front of Excepteur... Trying to edit such index entries is another nightmare. The navigator is useless to locate inserted entries. The navigation buttons in the edit index entries window navigates through the list of entries but there is no way to navigate to the context where the entry is inserted... It is not a good idea to blame me for not highlighting a character range before I inserted the index entry. I did so. However as soon as I change the text in the entry field this effort is obsoleted. There is no such thing like a short name used for biblio entries or a marker like the ones used for foot notes. If I had inserted such a marker myself in the text it would loose its significance as a marker as soon as I replace the entry text by some meaningful text. Trying to edit the index entry just before Michelbach I have another problem. Hoovering over the shaded tiny area I get a tooltip of the index entry. That is nice and shows me I found the right place. However the context menue does not include the line to open the index entry for editing. I try to navigate to the shaded area using the cursor control keys. No success. Only occasionally I get the context menue with index entry... I couldn't find a reliable procedure for editing.
Please could you describe step by step what you do to reproduce this problem from scratch? What is your OS ? In my test, the first word following the caret is selected when I insert an index entry. To edit an index entry: hit F1 key and type index in the tab Index of the help. Set status to NEEDINFO, please set it back to UNCONFIRMED once requested informations are provided. Best regards. JBF
My environment is MS-Windows 7 SP1 on a Thinkpad Laptop with a screen resolution of 1366x768. Writer is at level 6.0.2.1. I have no local help files installed I am using those from the internet. And here are my step-by step instructions: 1. Start up your writer 2. make sure that View / Field shading is not selected 3. Download https://bug-attachments.documentfoundation.org/attachment.cgi?id=140990 This is the Attachment 140990 [details] in Details for Bug 116715 4. Open the downloaded document with writer You should now see a few lines Lorem ipsum ... followed by an Alphabetical Index with the entry lines. There is no hint so far where these entries are inserted in the text. 5. You can try to use navigator to find these - I was not successful to do so. 6. Now turn on Field shading Three tiny shaded rectangles will show up in the text. 7. Turning on View Field Names has no effect - What kind of field is it? It is shaded but has no name? 8. Move your cursor over the shaded areas. For two of these areas a tooltip pops up showing part of the entered index entry. However at least in my environment no tooltip shows up when hoovering over the entry at the end of the line after pariatur. Next I try to enter the editing dialog for the index entry. 9. I click somewhere in the word Lorem, press Pos1 (cursor is now at the left edge of the shaded area) and then Alt+EE. The menue shows the line "Index entry..." 10. I click between the Tab-arrow and the word Lorem (cursor is now left of letter L) I press LeftArrow (cursor is now at the left edge of the shaded area, same as before) and then Alt+EE. The menue shows no line "Index entry..." 11. I click in the word Michelbach after M and LeftArrow (cursor is now at the left border of the shaded area at the beginning of the line), and then Alt+EE. The menue shows no line "Index entry..." 12. I click on dot after periatur (cursor is now at the left of the shaded area but after dot) and then Alt+EE. The menue shows no line "Index entry...". I press RightArrow (cursor is now in the middle of the shaded area) and then Alt+EE. The menue shows the line "Index entry..." It is difficult to navigate to the right place using cursor positioning with keys. Trying to move the cursor to the left edge of the shaded area is not good enough. The shown cursor position with respect to the tiny shaded area is not leaping to the eye and is not a reliable indicator. 13. I try to find the context menue by moving the cursor with the mouse to the shaded area and RightClick. The context menue sometimes shows the line "Index entry..." # but it frequently fails -- some other context menue shows up. This is so even in places where the tooltip shows the index entry. # The line "Index entry ..." may show up even if I RightClick outside the shaded area, e.g. when position is in the left margin left of Lorem or Michelbach or after the end of the line after periatur. 14. To improve cursor positioning I set View Scale to 400% 15. I hoovered over the area waiting for the tooltip to show and then pressed RightClick. The success rate was not better. I couldn't find a reliable way to get the Context menue with line "Index entry..." However working at that scale I made the following observation: If the cursor is placed with the mouse to the left half of the shaded area I get the line "Index entry...". However if the start position is in the right half of the shaded area the result is negative, e.g. the word Michelbach is selected instead. The tooltip seems to be triggered for cursor positions in a much wider area not identical to the shaded area.
There are improvements I would appreciate: First: For the sake of better visibility the shaded field for an index entry should be at least one character wide. Inside that shaded area the context menue should reliably include the line "Index entry...". What I see when stepping through the text with LeftArrrow, RightArrow makes me think that the inserted field is a character with width zero but the shading extends into the following character. In the demo text this is very visible looking a Michelbach where the shading covers part of the letter M. Second: I would like to be able to jump into index entry editing from the lines in the Index. Third: The context sensitive help pages should be the right ones. E.g. the Help button in Alt-EEE is answered with https://help.libreoffice.org/6.0/en-US/text/swriter/01/04120100.html?System=WIN&DbPAR=WRITER#bm_id3153539 which is not helpful and has not even a helpful related topic. Here it could be https://help.libreoffice.org/6.0/en-US/text/swriter/guide/indices_delete.html?DbPAR=WRITER#bm_id3155186
(In reply to Heinrich Hartl from comment #3) > There are improvements I would appreciate: > > First: For the sake of better visibility the shaded field for an index entry > should be at least one character wide. It's up to the user to make the right selection, a full word, one normal character, or a zero width char. Restrictions makes sense for one but could be a showstopper for others. And by the way, you can navigate through all indexes per Edit > Reference > Index Entry... (cursor has to be on an index entry). > Second: I would like to be able to jump into index entry editing from the > lines in the Index. Agreed, likewise the ToC where indexed headings are hyperlinks (ctrl+click). > Third: The context sensitive help pages should be the right ones. E.g. the > Help button in Alt-EEE is answered with > https://help.libreoffice.org/6.0/en-US/text/swriter/01/04120100. > html?System=WIN&DbPAR=WRITER#bm_id3153539 which is not helpful and has not > even a helpful related topic. Here it could be > https://help.libreoffice.org/6.0/en-US/text/swriter/guide/indices_delete. > html?DbPAR=WRITER#bm_id3155186 This goes to Olivier.
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #4) > It's up to the user to make the right selection, a full word, one normal > character, or a zero width char. Restrictions makes sense for one but could > be a showstopper for others. I need explanations for a novice: I know that a can select a short text sequence to define an index entry using menu insert / ToC&Index / Index Entry. The selected text becomes the entry in an alphabetical Index. The only modification that I know of is to alter the text of the entry. The implied consequence is that the visible marker in the document no longer is the selected text sequence but a (zero length character?) 1mm wide 1char high vertical shaded area bar. I know no other settings for the visible marker. Please let me know if there are other options. I want to explain what I want to achieve: Assume that synonyms are used in a document and I want to associate an explanation or translation to these words in the text. This is what a glossary normally provides. If I was allowed to complement the text string in the entry I could append "see also other-synonym-word". In my alphabetical index I might then find two entries: Brennnessel (Urtica)....... 27,27,39,110 Urtica dt. Brennnesseln.... 15,27 On page 27 i might find Brennesseln may hurt" ========== Die Gattung Urtica is named Brennesseln in German. ====== ========== Jede Brennessel kann schmerhafte Schwellungen verursachen ========== My be an alphabetical Index is not the appropriate choice to achieve that. But what is appropriate?
(In reply to Heinrich Hartl from comment #5) > My be an alphabetical Index is not the appropriate choice to achieve that. 1. Click Insert > Table of Contents and Index > Index Entry... (opens a dialog) 2. Enter Brennnessel at Entry 3. Select the word you want to index and click Insert (adds a small field indicator at the beginning of the word) 4. repeat 3 as often and wherever you want (all Brennnesseln and Urticas) 5. Click: Insert > Table of Contents and Index > Table of Contents, Index.. and select Alphabetical Index under Type (this adds the index at the end of the document with all occurrences of the index entries) You can load a file with key words (aka entries), step through the entries, modify the tables etc. It's quite flexible.
No further input, resolving NAB now. Feel free to reopen.