How can the inspector be found in the UI and in what LibO version?

@Luke Kendall
You're using LibreOffice for writing. And you're have already read something about the Style Inspector. You might give it a try and eventually give some feedback; It's easier to get things done while the feature is still under development..

Tools-> Options -> Enable experimental features.

https://libreoffice.soluzioniopen.com/index.php/daily-version/

Okay, so the feature is reached via
Tools-> Options -> Advanced -> Enable experimental features
After a restart of LO, there's a new icon for the Styles Inspector under the Navigator icon in the Manage Styles Dialog

1/
A couple of tiny points:
It's not resizeable at the moment (the panel is, but not the part displaying the styles)
ContinueingPreviousSubTree boolean under Direct Formatting: "continuing" tiny typo?

2/
Under Paragraph Styles in my document I have just
> Default Paragraph Style
> Text Body
> Chapter Body
Character Styles

I vaguely remember the suggestion that vertical placement maybe meant the style was derived from the one above?
But without any indentation, I don't see how that can work to show a hierarchy.
Could you draw connecting lines?

3/
Selecting the TOC, I see the styles change, now listing Index and Contents 1.
So now I can see it shows the styles of the current text.

4/
I'm certain my main text is all in my Chapter Body paragraph style.
But the existing para style text box (up near the top left of the doc window, under Files, Edit etc.) incorrectly shows Text Body.

I'm also certain the 1st paragraph of each chapter is in my ChapterBdy1st style.
It too is showing as just Text Body.

* Maybe a bug introduced by the experimental feature?

5/
The para style displayed in the Styles Inspector (SI) APPEARS to show that the first para of the chapter is Text Body style, simply because Text Body style is visible and 'unfolded'.

It was only when I scrolled down in the SI I realised that indeed the inheritance tree now shows
> Default[...]
> Text Body
> Chapter Body
> ChapterBdy1st

* That seems a mild usability problem: having the visible style showing a parent style rather than the actual style is misleading.
** Suggestion: Show the styles "folded up", not "unfolded" by default:
   in that case you'd very likely see the actual style.
** Suggestion alternative: scroll the SI view to focus on the actual (leaf)
   style, not a parent style

6/
It's super hard to compare styles, because when you click to a different paragraph the SI refreshes and goes back to its default place.

7/
Direct Formatting is really confusing to me in what it's showing.
I'm in a paragraph of text that I believe has no DF.
The DF section in the SI shows:
Oh. I can't copy and paste that text. So to compare it I'll need to either laboriously write each one down myself, or take a screenshot. :-(
Okay, I've done that: the 2nd para shows all the same DF but adds one more thing: "Rsid 304289352"
I don't understand why there are any items under DF because as far as I know I applied no DF.

8/
I'm also puzzled that ParaStyleName appears under DF. Does that mean because I have applied a paragraph style the para is somehow now styled by Direct Formatting?
Selecting the para and clearing DF (Ctrl-M) clears most of those items, even though they were all properties provided by the paragraph style; to take just two examples, CharHeight 10.5 and CharFontName Georgia, which were provided by the paragraph style, not by DF (as far as I'm aware!)

9/
Likewise, very puzzled that the PageStyleName appears under DF.

10/
I have no idea what Character Styles in the SI is; maybe it's not implemented yet?
Or maybe there are no character styles applied in that paragraph?

11/
It doesn't appear as though Heiko Tietze's suggestion for Find & Replace has been addressed in this build - having separate Styles and Text tabs for the different kinds of searches for F&R.

Personal overall assessment:
Looks promising, though it has some usability issues and may be a bit confusing at present.

HTH!

Oh, and when I just closed the Styles Inspector panel now, Writer crashed.

After it restarted, the SI window appeared to be "rolled up". It wasn't, the main body was just drawn about 1 pixel high. I could drag it to resize it.

Closing it after the recovery was fine.

I don't know how to make them "blocking a bug".

(In reply to Luke Kendall from comment #7)
> I don't know how to make them "blocking a bug".

Hi Luke, Thank you for your assessment.
Please file bugs and add me to CC, ill take care of the rest.
Thanks

Ignore that, figured it out, new bug submitted as requested.

Am I right in thinking that if I use Ctrl-I to directly format a word, and then at the end of the word use Ctrl-I again to (from the naive user's perspective) toggle back to regular style, that instead DF is still "turned on"?  In other words, that I'm kind of in a DF 'mode'?

If that's the case, it would explain why massive sweeps of text in my books (and perhaps many other users' documents), are directly formatted.

If so, should I submit an enhancement request?  It seems a huge usability trap to mark all subsequent text as DF just from turning on italics and then (*apparently*) off via an apparent toggle, instead of knowing and remembering to clear the 'hidden mode' via a Ctrl-M.

It was only just now that this possibility dawned on me, even though I've been gradually learning more and more about DF in Writer over the last few years.

(In reply to Luke Kendall from comment #11)
> Am I right in thinking that if I use Ctrl-I to directly format a word, and
> then at the end of the word use Ctrl-I again to (from the naive user's
> perspective) toggle back to regular style, that instead DF is still "turned
> on"?  In other words, that I'm kind of in a DF 'mode'?

This is just a offtopic here in this META. (And yes, you are still in DF mode, see tdf#135871, which is NAB).