Bug 145744 - Improve cell selection outline for better visibility
Summary: Improve cell selection outline for better visibility
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 142121
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Calc (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
7.3.0.0 alpha1+
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2021-11-17 18:24 UTC by Rafael Lima
Modified: 2021-11-29 08:29 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Sample XLSX file (8.51 KB, application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet)
2021-11-17 18:24 UTC, Rafael Lima
Details
ODG file with screenshots (74.93 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.graphics)
2021-11-17 18:35 UTC, Rafael Lima
Details
the blue cell cursor in LO Calc 7.3 (7.86 KB, image/png)
2021-11-18 19:33 UTC, Roman Kuznetsov
Details

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
Description Rafael Lima 2021-11-17 18:24:40 UTC
Created attachment 176321 [details]
Sample XLSX file

When you click a cell in LO Calc, a selection outline is drawn in black to show which cell is selected. However, when you create a file in Excel and apply default borders (which have width of 0.75pt) the selection outline becomes invisible in LO Calc with zoom levels 160% and above.

To reproduce:
1) Open the attached file (XLSX) and zoom in to around (160% or 180%)
2) Click anywhere inside the table; notice that it is not possible to see the selection outline; it's very hard (or not possible at all depending on zoom level) to tell which cell is selected.
3) Click outside and notice that LO Calc's default outline is too thin

This becomes an issue in two major situations:
1) For Excel interoperability, since borders in Excel use by default black color and width of 0.75 pt and the selection outline becomes invisible in Calc
2) There seems to be an interest in making 0.75pt the default in Calc as well (see comment #27 in bug 48622); hence this problem may become more noticeable in the future;

Currently LO Calc uses hairline width (0.05 pt) so this is why the selection outline is not a problem when using Calc's default settings at any zoom level.

To improve the situation, there are a few ideas:
1) Use a different color (f.i. the system's highlight color)
2) Increase the outline width

PS: The issue does not occur with zoom 100%... however it is very common to use higher zoom levels and when this is done the outline becomes invisible. This is why there's room for improvement in how the cell selection outline is handled.
Comment 1 Rafael Lima 2021-11-17 18:35:59 UTC
Created attachment 176322 [details]
ODG file with screenshots

To better illustrate my point, I have just added an ODG file with 3 screenshots:

1) How Google Drive handles the same file: notice they use a blue outline that is visible over default black borders;

2) How Excel Online handles the same file: they use a thick green border that is very visible;

3) How LO Calc handles the same file: starting with zoom 160% the outline becomes very hard to notice and increasing the zoom level makes it disappear.
Comment 3 Roman Kuznetsov 2021-11-18 19:32:37 UTC
Today we have a blue cell cursor in Calc (see attach) in current 7.3 daily build
Comment 4 Roman Kuznetsov 2021-11-18 19:33:05 UTC
Created attachment 176350 [details]
the blue cell cursor in LO Calc 7.3
Comment 5 Rafael Lima 2021-11-21 21:29:03 UTC
(In reply to Roman Kuznetsov from comment #4)
> Created attachment 176350 [details]
> the blue cell cursor in LO Calc 7.3

That's true... I've just tried LO 7.3 compiled from source and indeed the cursor is light blue (looks great btw).

I could not locate which patch changed the cursor color to blue.
Comment 6 Roman Kuznetsov 2021-11-22 09:00:03 UTC
(In reply to Rafael Lima from comment #5)
> (In reply to Roman Kuznetsov from comment #4)
> > Created attachment 176350 [details]
> > the blue cell cursor in LO Calc 7.3
> 
> That's true... I've just tried LO 7.3 compiled from source and indeed the
> cursor is light blue (looks great btw).
> 
> I could not locate which patch changed the cursor color to blue.

It were

https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/122602

https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/123300
Comment 7 Rafael Lima 2021-11-22 12:22:50 UTC
Roman, thanks for the info.

Fixing bug 142121 also fixed this enhancement request. So I'll mark this one as NOTABUG, since it had been previously fixed.

I updated the release notes for 7.3 to reflect this change.
Comment 8 Adolfo Jayme Barrientos 2021-11-29 08:29:20 UTC

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 142121 ***