Bug 134764 - Show feedback when selection (ctrl+a) is made on a section only
Summary: Show feedback when selection (ctrl+a) is made on a section only
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
6.4.4.2 release
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Section
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2020-07-12 20:53 UTC by TorrAB
Modified: 2023-05-08 20:01 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
file with text to select (31.55 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2020-07-12 20:56 UTC, TorrAB
Details
file written from selection (18.48 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2020-07-12 20:58 UTC, TorrAB
Details
Screencast (3.21 MB, video/mp4)
2020-07-13 11:15 UTC, Telesto
Details

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Description TorrAB 2020-07-12 20:53:45 UTC
Description:
In Sections.odt, go to p.3, ‘Procédure’; hit ^a (under Windows) to select all; use the mouse & slider to see the shaded selection: it extends to a little portion in the preious page, and not-at-all in the next: ‘E: Présentation…’. Why? One would expect ^a to select the whole file, eg, to copy&paste it in a template. With this partial selection, I get a partial file —SectionsA.odt.


Steps to Reproduce:
1.see above
2.
3.

Actual Results:
selects only current section —?

Expected Results:
^a should select all, from beginning to end of text —or give a warning that it did not and a option to do so.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No



Additional Info:
none
Comment 1 TorrAB 2020-07-12 20:56:10 UTC
Created attachment 162943 [details]
file with text to select
Comment 2 TorrAB 2020-07-12 20:58:10 UTC
Created attachment 162944 [details]
file written from selection
Comment 3 Telesto 2020-07-12 21:22:01 UTC
Repro with 7.1

and 
4.3.7.2

Not sure if there is deeper reason for this. Press CTRL A twice and the problem is solved
Comment 4 Heiko Tietze 2020-07-13 10:13:42 UTC
Mike, any idea? Not a hidden paragraph; page style changes but cannot reproduce with a simple example.
Comment 5 Mike Kaganski 2020-07-13 10:20:50 UTC
It's a normal operation with sections. When user has sections, or tables, or frames, etc, the first Ctrl+A selects the innermost block (current section/table cell/frame); the second Ctrl+A selects the next level (outer section; whole table...). You might need several Ctrl+A to select the whole document. That is by design. It's a different question if we need some "select really all", or change Ctrl+A to be "really all", and introduce some "select current" - with implications like users used to select table cells with Ctrl+A filing bugs :)

Resolving NOTABUG. Feel free to convert to enhancement request with QA evaluation.
Comment 6 Heiko Tietze 2020-07-13 10:33:17 UTC
Uh, it's a section. Learned right now to look at the status bar or to check the context menu for the paragraph break.

While this interaction makes sense I can follow the confusion. How about a notification "Selection has been made for this section only. Press ctrl+A again for all text", ideally per infobar that disappears after some seconds.
Comment 7 Mike Kaganski 2020-07-13 10:52:27 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #6)

When selecting, we have a section in the status bar dedicated to it: "Selected: ... words, ... characters". We could use it to not add more intrusive things (like infobars) which would cause view jumps and user complaints.

Maybe just make it red for some seconds, with words like "Selected: Table1:A1" or "Selected: Section A", etc.
Comment 8 Heiko Tietze 2020-07-13 10:56:46 UTC
(In reply to Mike Kaganski from comment #7)
> Maybe just make it red for some seconds, with words like "Selected:
> Table1:A1" or "Selected: Section A", etc.

Sounds good to me.
Comment 9 Heiko Tietze 2020-07-13 11:01:05 UTC
Requires consequently to change ctrl+A to "Selected: all" and to show the word/character count in the tooltip. Or "Selected: all (42 words, 4711 characters)" - too much details for my taste. 
And in case of a section "Selected: Section1 (10 words, 20 characters)". Not perfect.
Comment 10 Mike Kaganski 2020-07-13 11:09:19 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #9)
> Or "Selected: all (42 words, 4711
> characters)" - too much details for my taste. 
> And in case of a section "Selected: Section1 (10 words, 20 characters)". Not
> perfect.

OMG. Please don't try to fit the universe in a baby book. The wording is almost perfect. W I'd change is moving the "Section/All/etc" to the end (the length of the name could be arbitrarily long, pushing word/char count info out of the view), and shorten the "words/characters", to become

> Selected: 42 w, 4711 ch (Section1)

I see that the dangers of crowded UI resulted in pathological urge to remove everything useful, because "the simpler the better".
Comment 11 Telesto 2020-07-13 11:15:54 UTC
Created attachment 162962 [details]
Screencast

Is it possible to get a more precise answer (instead of comment 5). I you pick different positions in the doc, you get different results.. Sometimes a section is select, sometimes everything is selected. 

So not seeing the consistent line in the current behavior. So no clue if CTRL+A should select everything or multiple CTRL+A presses are needed, but current behavior is flawed one way or another, IMHO
Comment 12 Telesto 2020-07-13 11:22:24 UTC
And the 'randomness' is already in
LibreOffice 3.3.0 
OOO330m19 (Build:6)
tag libreoffice-3.3.0.4

And to say that everything in 3.3.0 is based on pure logic, with nice and consistent behavior
Comment 13 Mike Kaganski 2020-07-13 11:27:55 UTC
(In reply to Telesto from comment #11)
> Is it possible to get a more precise answer (instead of comment 5). I you
> pick different positions in the doc, you get different results.. Sometimes a
> section is select, sometimes everything is selected. 

No it's not possible. It's possible to say that there is a bug, when having a cursor at the very first position in a section works as if you are outside of a section. It's not random, it's a bug.