Created attachment 170808 [details] A Special Character dialog filtered for spaces Special Character dialog shows all cells in its grid identically (e.g., with same background), which makes positions with space characters look same to cells without characters at all. For instance, when you enter a search term "space", you only have space characters in the grid, followed by unused cells; but it's not obvious to user that the grid actually contains some search results, until one tries to click on one of the first cells. See the attached screenshot for an example. A proposal would be to e.g. have a different background (or maybe a red cross) in the unused cells.
Please don't forget to CC @libreoffice-ux-advise when using the keyword needsUXEval.
The Special Character dialog is rendering glyphs for a particular font. If the number of glyphs defined does not fill the collapsed packing of the chart--why not use the undefined glyph for the respective font to fill the remained of the chart? Typically that would be the font provided U+0000 glyph. As the font shown in the chart changes, the chart would be padded with the corresponding control glyph. Though personally I like to see us go back to a full Unicode 16 column mapped chart layout (pre LO 6.0).
(In reply to V Stuart Foote from comment #2) > If > the number of glyphs defined does not fill the collapsed packing of the > chart--why not use the undefined glyph for the respective font to fill the > remained of the chart? I don't see how rendering a "undefined" glyph fits "no data in this place"? "Undefined" is for "there is a code point here, but no glyph". The problem in this bug is "show that there's no code point here".
Unicode does the same https://unicode-table.com/en/0020/ The UI might be easy, for example by highlighting the non-visible part of a glyph like variables or fields. But I doubt the code to find spaces (and similar invisible characters) is tricky. The worse alternative is to draw a frame around the glyph or to omit the gridlines for empty results in the table- at least users know how many cells have content. Good thing is that you get a feedback per glyph name on single click, that WFM.
To mark empty cells by filling it with a hatching would be probably much easier than omitting gridlines.
FTR: Some possible view that would match what Heiko proposes in comment 5 (and what I like) would look like https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1C80.pdf
No further input from UX, let's do it.
Created attachment 185658 [details] Hatching drawn on every single cell The attachment shows the hatching drawn on every single cell. We could even draw it for the entire cell block if it is possible. Opinions?
(In reply to Andreas Heinisch from comment #8) > Created attachment 185658 [details] > Hatching drawn on every single cell > > The attachment shows the hatching drawn on every single cell. We could even > draw it for the entire cell block if it is possible. Opinions? LGTM. Besides the hatch is functionally perfect I wonder why you don't fill the cells with disabled grey, or whatever is defined on the system (if we know that). If you stick to the hatch make sure it works on dark mode too.
Created attachment 185659 [details] Disabling unused cells using LO shadow color
Created attachment 185660 [details] Disabling unused cells using LO disable color
(In reply to Andreas Heinisch from comment #11) > Created attachment 185660 [details] > Disabling unused cells using LO disable color Not more appealing than the hatches (the grey is quite dark unlike the disabled button next to it) but straight-forward implemented, IMO. The gridlines should remain visible.
Proposed patch: https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/148051 The special characters dialog has some flaws. For instance, there is no scroll bar if you search for a character, or the grid sometimes shows no cells, etc.
Andreas Heinisch committed a patch related to this issue. It has been pushed to "master": https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/abb2151dc915defbc12dcf78bd01ae69f2f1f292 tdf#141319 - Special Characters Dialog: mark empty/unused cells It will be available in 7.6.0. The patch should be included in the daily builds available at https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More information about daily builds can be found at: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Great improvement!