I was originally going to post this in issue 38093 I think it was, but I see it was closed when I tried to submit it. Possible solution to the fold/unfold or collapse/expand problem I saw mentioned in a comment in that other issue post. Don't know if it will help or not, but here it is, apologies in advance for it being a long post. ---------------------------------------------------------------- I am not really a programmer or that knowledgeable about the subject, just had a possible solution to add to something I saw in one of the earlier comments about folding/unfolding as it pertains to collapsing/expanding (to me, those 2 things are synonymous just different words for the same thing) the "detailed text" under an element or heading or whatever. When running a live disk of a Linux version, you can't add any software, so you have to work with what you have. There is a mind mapping program on the live disk, but I don't care much for them as far as outlining purposes go. I like a nice linear flow of levels/sublevels and then adding in additional detail as I go along or at a later date/time, and the mind mapper just seems very awkward to me for doing this. So, I came across an article about hiding/unhiding (folding/unfolding) text in HTML documents. It was an extremely easy form of handling the problem - you just put a few lines (Less than 30, I think substantially less) of JavaScript code into the <head></head> element of the webpage, then did an ordered or unordered HTML list in your text editor. Then you put a "parent ID" in say you <li> tag of the <li></li> tags, and a "Child ID" in the <span> element start tag (I think they were the same ID, if I remember correctly they HAD to be) and put your "detailed text" where you expanded on the concept in the <span> element or whatever and the "parent ID" snippet in the <li> 'header' or whatever you might want to call it. And voila, you were done. The <li> text itself became like a clickable link --- I would have to include HTML color code in with the 'parent' element to change the color to actually distinguish them from HTML links! This worked OK, until you reach the point where you have 100s/1,000s of elements in your outline. Then the 'outline' became impossible to work with in the text editor - because it didn't have code folding built in. So, your document became 10s and then 100s or more of pages long, and became impossible to work with/'keep track of'. So I gave up the method. For years now I have just done the outlining in LO, using lists and hidden text. But this is a huge pain as well - right now I have it set up on both computers, but any time I have to re-install Linux (every couple of years) I forget how I got it to work and have to spend days searching forums, asking questions, 'monkeying around' in LO, etc before I finally stumble across the solution of how I got that to work. And outlining in LO in this way has a further HUGE disadvantage. You have to 'give up levels' in the list so that you can have your headers, and then the detailed text in 'unnumbered list entries' or whatever they are called in LO. Another HUGE disadvantage to doing this is that LO (and OOo) both have no 'tabs' functionality in them - so you had to have at least 2 LO documents open at once -- the story, article, etc you were working on in one document and the outline in the other one. And then another HUGE disadvantage of outlining in LO this way; you can't drag and drop as stated earlier, or even insert something in the best location for it (at least I never figured out how to do it), you have to 'add it on' at the end of the list section/sub-section even though that is a poor location for that entry. I wish I could find the page where I learned this JavaScript trick, so that that author could be given credit for their ingenious trick -- a short piece of JavaScript in the <head> section, a "uniqueID" snippet each for parent and child ID, and voila, you have collapse/expand features in HTML! But I believe I do still have the JavaScript code and the snippets of JavaScript for the child/parent IDs. If it would not be too hard to convert them over to UNO or LibreOffice Basic (or I see in the section for creating macros that it has an entry for JavaScript so maybe JavaScript functionality is already built into LO?) or whatever, then this seems like it could be an IDEAL solution to the collapse/expand portion of the outlining problem being discussed here. So, if anyone thinks that this code could be used/repurposed in LO for the collapse/expand function of outlining please let me know and I will post again with the code. P.S. : I decided my post was already long-winded enough I might as well just post the code now and you can decide if it would be usable for this problem in LO outlining. JavaScript code for <head> <head> <script type="text/javascript"> function toggleShowHide(elementId) { var element = document.getElementById(elementId); if (element) { if (element.style.display == "none") element.style.display = "inline"; else element.style.display = "none"; } } </script> </head> JavaScript 'parent ID' snippet : <li onClick="toggleShowHide('UniqueID')"> JavaScript 'child ID' snippet : <span id="UniqueID" style="display:none"> You will notice the parent ID is enclosed in ' ' and the child ID is enclosed in " ". Probably something required to get it to work in JavaScript - I don't know JavaScript. All you do is select UniqueID in both snippets, change them to something that matches in both cases, say 'level1.1' and "level1.1", and you are 'in business'! I don't know if this will help at all or not, but I hope so. I would like to see an actual easy outlining functionality added to LO, I have even posted about this and posted that code in 'bug issues' on both the OOo and LO bug forums in the past, but I gave up when so many people were leaving negative comments about "adding outlining to OOo/LO" saying "You can already do that with Headings in the Navigator". Maybe LO/Navigator Ninjas can, but as an average everyday user I could never figure it out, always got disgusted with it, and used my sub-optimal LO outlining technique I discussed earlier in this post. So I hope this helps.
Steveh, thanks for your remarks, but this is a meta bug to collect several issues around the new writer outline view. So please open a new bug report. Thank you.
(In reply to Dieter from comment #2) > Steveh, thanks for your remarks, but this is a meta bug to collect several > issues around the new writer outline view. So please open a new bug report. > Thank you. OK Dieter, thanks for the input/correction. I have a huge issue though, as you may be able to tell from my post. When I set up my account, I must have missed something for a username to put on posts. I see in my post it has put my email address in as the poster, out there for everyone and their brother to see and start spamming me at. Is there any way I can go in and change my account to have a 'display name' or whatever? Or could you or someone else that has admin rights please delete my post so my email address is not out there? I would appreciate it VERY much. Thank you.
(In reply to steveh_66@hotmail.com from comment #3) > Is there any way I can go in and > change my account to have a 'display name' or whatever? Or could you or > someone else that has admin rights please delete my post so my email address > is not out there? I would appreciate it VERY much. Thank you. Yes, go to Preferences (top of this page)and then choose Account Information. But before you post a comment to this new feature, you should install master (feature should be available in two days) and test. You can download master build from http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/master/current.html and install it alongside the standard version.
(In reply to steveh from comment #1) It seems that you are suggesting simply to add the expand/collapse functionality to Writer - exactly the thing that was just added? Otherwise I don't see what is the problem you see with the change that Jim has just implemented, and which may be tested in daily builds?
I would like to express my gratitude to Mr Raykowski for adding this feature to LibreOffice. I have been using LibreOffice, OpenOffice.org, and StarOffice since the last century and I think the addition of better outlining features has been my most desired improvement over all that time. Outlining really makes writing easier and results in better-quality documents. Navigator is not the same. I have installed a LibreOffice Daily build for the first time because I want this so much. I joined the BugZilla just to say thank you. So thank you all, and especially Mr Raykowski, and I hope that you will continue to develop this feature.
Created attachment 168442 [details] Illustration of requested darkening of "tree" structure The outline view is such a great improvement that I'm hesitant to even hazard a suggestion but I will anyway. The lines indicating the structure of the outline tree are almost invisible. These are the latitude and longitude of the Navigator; could they be made more prominent? Darker? Colored? Lengthen the horizontal lines? Thank you Jim Raikowski!
(In reply to R. Hutchins from comment #7) > The outline view is such a great improvement that I'm hesitant to even > hazard a suggestion but I will anyway. Thanks for your suggestion. But this is a Meta Bug, that only collects several bugs regarding to the topic "Writer Outline View". So please open an new bug report and add this meta bug in the "Blocks" field. Thank you.
Name of the feature is now "Outline Folding" (see bug 141102). So I changed Alias of this meta-bug.
I would like to ask what the objective of this meta-bug "Writer-Outline-Folding" actually is? Does it refer to the feature that sits (if experimental features are activated) in OPTIONS -> WRITER -> VIEW -> OUTLINE FOLDING? Do these bugs need to be fixed until the currently experimental feature "Outline Folding" can be enabled by default? Or is it rather a meta bug, because outline folding and outline view is only half implemented and missing a number of features? Thanks a lot! Code folding is such a fantastic feature. I hope that this feature can get out of experimental mode soon. Is there a chance for LO 7.4?
(In reply to Gerry from comment #10) > Does it refer to the feature that sits (if experimental features are > activated) in OPTIONS -> WRITER -> VIEW -> OUTLINE FOLDING? Yes > Do these bugs need to be fixed until the currently experimental feature > "Outline Folding" can be enabled by default? Not all, but perhaps a more cruical bug like bug 142447. But it's up to Design-Team and Jim Raykowski to decide about it, I think.