Created attachment 179954 [details] Libre 7 Area dialog tabs, with needed enhancements shown in blue & red. Background: Over the years, I've developed extensive custom .soc and .sog files for engineering diagrams, such as semiconductor fabrication layers. They worked fine in Libre 4. But I'm dismayed to find there seems no way to load these files into Libre 7, without redoing it all from scratch. Have tried copying my files onto share\palette\standard.so[cg]. But nothing changes. Relevant Articles: Have read Heiko Tietze's article on Libre 7 palette. It at least offered an explanation of why Tools > Options > Colors disappeared. But it has no solution, except to recreate all my old files by hand. URL: design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2016/12/30/ Issue: The inability of a Libre 7 user to load a custom palette file seems to be a major oversight in the code. To Reproduce: 1. Open the Area dialog, or click: Format > Object > Area 2. Try to figure out where the Color or Gradient files are coming from in the Windows 10 file system. 3. And then try to change them to your own .soc or .sog file.
UPDATE: I must have done something right : ) The Area-Style/Filling drop-down list (when set to Gradient) now lists my custom gradients, in ideal [swatch][name] format. Wunderbar! The Area dialog (Area tab) also shows the same custom gradients, but in less-readable and harder-to-identify [swatch-only] format. REMAINING ISSUES: I believe this custom palette is the SINGLE BEST FEATURE of Libre for engineers and scientists. To make it more robust and less frustrating for these users, I'd still request the following needed fixes: a. Restore the [Load] button -- as indicated on my attachment -- enabling users to quickly select between custom .so[cgb] files. b. Display the full pathname of the .so[cgb] on the dialog. How can users hand-edit these files (as Heiko recommends) if we have no idea where the tool is getting them? I suspect it sometimes looks in: C:\Users\..\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice\4\user\config, for example. c. Restore the [swatch][name] format to all Fill-related dialogs, perhaps as a Libre option under Tools > Options > Colors. Swatches alone are hard to sort out -- especially when months have gone by since you created a new color or gradient. Thank you!
(In reply to gearhead from comment #1) > UPDATE: > I must have done something right : ) > The Area-Style/Filling drop-down list (when set to Gradient) now lists > my custom gradients, in ideal [swatch][name] format. Wunderbar! > > The Area dialog (Area tab) also shows the same custom gradients, but > in less-readable and harder-to-identify [swatch-only] format. > > REMAINING ISSUES: > I believe this custom palette is the SINGLE BEST FEATURE of Libre for > engineers and scientists. To make it more robust and less frustrating > for these users, I'd still request the following needed fixes: > > a. Restore the [Load] button -- as indicated on my attachment -- > enabling users to quickly select between custom .so[cgb] files. Bug 120369 > b. Display the full pathname of the .so[cgb] on the dialog. > How can users hand-edit these files (as Heiko recommends) if we have > no idea where the tool is getting them? I suspect it sometimes looks in: > C:\Users\..\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice\4\user\config, for example. > > c. Restore the [swatch][name] format to all Fill-related dialogs, perhaps > as a Libre option under Tools > Options > Colors. Swatches alone > are hard to sort out -- especially when months have gone by since > you created a new color or gradient. UX team can comment on these. One issue per report, though.
Don't mess with internal files :-) IIRC, the correct position of user-defined content is <config>/libreoffice/4/gallery. Or is it <config>/libreoffice/4/user/config? Anyway, the recommended way to deal with own palettes is the user palette, meaning you always add colors to this palette called "custom". I created an extension [1] to export this "custom" palette under a variable name. Load the extension to make it available as another entry in the list of color palettes. And don't forget to share. [1] https://extensions.libreoffice.org/en/extensions/show/custom-palette-eport
To comment on your idea: Showing the full name somewhere is not a good solution as your workflow is very special and most users are not interested in this information. The position can be defined via Tools > Options > Path. Note: Next to the combobox to pick a color palette is a direct access to all color palettes located on our extension site for quick and easy installation on your system (see alsohttps://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2016/11/11/additions-to-libreoffice/). And for the mentioned export extension see https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2017/03/29/libreoffice-extension-export-custom-palette/