Description: Hello, LO Writer provides a feature to hide character (Format\Character...\Font Effects\Hidden). This can become useful to hide less important information that still should be visible under other conditions. E.g. comments or text that is inappropriate for some audience during a presentation. Unfortunately LO Writer does not provide a short way to show all hidden characters in the "View" menu or in any toolbar. This should become become an option to all users. Steps to Reproduce: 1.Mark text 2.Use Format>Characters>Font Effects>Hidden 3.You need to mark all text and use the same format dialog again Actual Results: no Expected Results: a menu entry Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: No Additional Info: .
You can show / hide hidden characters with Tools => Options => LibreOffice Writer => Formatting Aids => Display Formatting => Hidden characters Is this solution sufficient for you? => NEEDINFO
Hello Dieter, I don't find the described method a sufficient solution for showing hidden characters. for several reasons: 1. Your way isn't mentioned inside LibreOffice help. 2. Combining hidden text with formatting aids strictly limits the use-cases of hidden characters to user defined formatting notes. But other than Calc's hidden columns/rows which are only need visible to extend or modify an already finished spreadsheet are hidden characters in Writer utilizable for many reasons, e.g. giving additional (background) information or showing literary references. So I suggest a separate toolbar entry, optimally with Writer's read-only mode binding.
[Automated Action] NeedInfo-To-Unconfirmed
Adding a UNO command to customize the hidden text on/off sounds like a plan to me.
I expect lots of people would be unhappy with this request. If I understand correctly, earlier on the "Show non-printing Characters" would show hidden characters. That was made into the option Dieter mentioned, but TURNED OFF BY DEFAULT. (This was prior to LO3.5, so I can't easily identify when/why this was done. And I could easily be completely wrong in my understanding.) In any case, the fact that this is not turned on by default is a big clue that some people want hidden to be non-trivial to reveal. In any case, it seems like the perfect solution for OP. I agree that it would be nice to have the documentation about "hidden" make mention of how it can be revealed.
(In reply to Justin L from comment #5) > In any case, the fact that this is not turned on by default is a big clue > that some people want hidden to be non-trivial to reveal. Those some people don't understand the strength of protection of hidden characters. You can open any ODF-files inside a plain-text editor and see all characters. Even hidden cells in Excel or Calc could be revealed in plain-text but at least does hidden cells offer an password protection. > In any case, it seems like the perfect solution for OP. I agree that it > would be nice to have the documentation about "hidden" make mention of how > it can be revealed. Agree, this has to be done anyways. Especially without the asked menu entry.
I just tried a search of the help (LO 7.1) for "hidden" and "hide". It seems to be documented fairly well already. "Hidden text - showing (Writer)" is one result that brings you right to the Formatting Aids page, which contains "Hidden characters: Displays text that uses the character format "hidden", when View - Formatting Marks is enabled." So I'm not sure what else needs to be done. We already have a toolbar item that is capable of displaying the text, and documentation that indicates the one-time setting that needs to be made to have "Show Formatting" display hidden text.
(In reply to Justin L from comment #7) > I just tried a search of the help (LO 7.1) for "hidden" and "hide". It seems > to be documented fairly well already. As my comments #0 and #2 already said, hidden characters could provide more than additional formatting marks! But in facts of documentation take this simple use case: 1. A new LO user write some text, choose "Format"->"Character..." and than "Hidden" Two effects can apply: 2.a Formatting marks aren't enabled and the selected characters turns actually hidden: -> the user is satisfied and continue his work, using LO help only to learn how to uncover the hidden characters 2.b Formatting marks are enabled and the characters are still visible after editing: -> the user doesn't consult the documentation but turns disappointed by taking the behavior as a bug I don't thing any user aspect hidden characters to be bound to formatting marks, especially not users who are aware of hidden cells in e.g. MS Excel. But as I already said, hidden characters should become much more than additional formatting marks!
(In reply to Justin L from comment #5) The topic of whether show hidden text should be enabled by default and/or whether there should be a view-menu option is discussed in bug 107658. Quite frankly, I would consider this to be a duplicate of that. Personally, I think the current status quo is best.
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This is essentially a duplicate of bug 107722, which requests a UNO command for toggling the visibility of Hidden characters. Once this is implemented, users are free to add it to toolbars or assign a shortcut to it. (However, looks like the current implementation has it tied to Formatting Marks visibility, so even if that's done, S.Zosnornik's use case might not be covered. Wondering if the feature could be better labelled to clarify that's the case.) *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 107722 ***