Bug 138982 - VIEWING Enhancement: Show cursor position as percentage of document
Summary: VIEWING Enhancement: Show cursor position as percentage of document
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
unspecified
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: needsUXEval
Depends on:
Blocks: Word-Count
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2020-12-16 20:21 UTC by Jay
Modified: 2020-12-19 14:59 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
Description Jay 2020-12-16 20:21:54 UTC
Description:
When writing a novel events in the story should be placed near specific positions within the document. Please add to the status bar the position of the cursor within the document as a percentage. Example: With the cursor/insertion point in the middle of the document show 50%. At the start of the document show 0%. At the end show 100%.

Actual Results:
Enhancement.

Expected Results:
Enhancement.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No



Additional Info:
Would be very helpful. The position could be calculated using character count or word count. It's not particularly important which is used for this application. There are other enhancements for writers that would be very helpful too, but I'd be happy for any improvement. Setting up a build environment and submitting a pull request for something so simple seems like a waste.
Comment 1 V Stuart Foote 2020-12-16 22:49:48 UTC
We already provide the Page details, while the "thumb" on the vertical scroll bar gives a visual representation of where in the document the view cursor is located.  

Adding a textual "percentage" entry of cursor position would just add clutter for the majority of users.

-1
Comment 2 Jay 2020-12-16 23:01:35 UTC
As they say "One man's trash is another man's treasure." I guess in this case it would be "clutter" instead of "trash."

Is there an API/theme/plugin that allows me to customize my installation for my workflow?
Comment 3 Heiko Tietze 2020-12-17 11:00:19 UTC
Would turn this around and ask for cursor position in line/character (rather than percentage) as known from text editors. We could make this part of bug 123083 and allow either to show the total of word/characters or the actual position on the page.
Comment 4 Jay 2020-12-17 13:04:34 UTC
The position within the page/line is not useful for writing fiction. The position within the document is used to place events within the context of the story.
Those are used for programming tasks, which I do not believe is a common use for a word processor ;)
Comment 5 Heiko Tietze 2020-12-18 08:48:14 UTC
(In reply to Jay from comment #4)
> The position within the page/line is not useful for writing fiction.

Do you have evidence of a wider use case? Otherwise I'd prefer a solution per extension. Point is that I can easily make a rough estimation of current page by total pages to get the percentage. Same for lines/characters (comment 3), which has the benefit for programming and any tasks that involve monospace fonts.
Comment 6 Jay 2020-12-18 13:08:48 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #5)
> (In reply to Jay from comment #4)
> > The position within the page/line is not useful for writing fiction.
> 
> Do you have evidence of a wider use case? Otherwise I'd prefer a solution
> per extension. Point is that I can easily make a rough estimation of current
> page by total pages to get the percentage. Same for lines/characters
> (comment 3), which has the benefit for programming and any tasks that
> involve monospace fonts.

Evidence of wider use:  "The three act play." A structure used WIDELY in plays, novels, and movies. Since ancient Greece.

Benefit for programming? I can't believe given the wide availability of excellent and free IDE's for programming that anyone uses libre writer for programming. 

I've made my request and outlined the use for it. If you don't want to implement it close this one and move on to the next ticket. It's probably not worth the effort to setup a build environment. I'll put a bounty on it or fork the code to make a word processor for writers.
Comment 7 V Stuart Foote 2020-12-18 15:07:03 UTC
(In reply to Jay from comment #6)
> 
> Evidence of wider use:  "The three act play." A structure used WIDELY in
> plays, novels, and movies. Since ancient Greece.
> 
> Benefit for programming? I can't believe given the wide availability of
> excellent and free IDE's for programming that anyone uses libre writer for
> programming. 
> 
> I've made my request and outlined the use for it. If you don't want to
> implement it close this one and move on to the next ticket. It's probably
> not worth the effort to setup a build environment. I'll put a bounty on it
> or fork the code to make a word processor for writers.

Providing status bar textual description, as supplement the visual queue already provided in the vert scroll bar, has limited value to our 'Benjamin' users, and does not belong in the UI.

But, as Heiko suggests, fertile ground for a macro or even publish as an extension, presumably with other UI optimizations "useful to writers". 

IMHO => WF