Description: I'm currently making a presentation and I'm noticing some areas where extra visual aids would be very helpful. First, when inserting a vector graphic without a background, you have to hover the mouse over a line to be able to select the image with a click. With an image with only few lines and when scaling it up a lot, it's very difficult to find a spot where you can actually select the image. Adding to that, when you want to e.g. orient a text box on an image with white or no background, that's basically impossible. So when enabling the guiding lines when moving an object, it would be helpful when there's also a border around all other objects, so you see where everything begins and ends. Also, when inserting a table and editing it, the cell borders show up when selecting the table itself, but not when simply editing it. So it's very difficult to edit, since you pretty much edit it blindly when you remove the default background color. It would be helpful if the cell borders would always be shown except in presentation mode, e.g. in gray, so you see they aren't really there but are only shown as a visual guide. Steps to Reproduce: See above Actual Results: See above Expected Results: See above Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: No OpenGL enabled: Yes Additional Info: See above
(In reply to rrosner5 from comment #0) > First, when inserting a vector graphic without a background, you have to > hover the mouse over a line to be able to select the image with a click. > With an image with only few lines and when scaling it up a lot, it's very > difficult to find a spot where you can actually select the image. This has been reported in bug 50359. > Adding to that, when you want to e.g. orient a text box on an image with > white or no background, that's basically impossible. So when enabling the > guiding lines when moving an object, it would be helpful when there's also a > border around all other objects, so you see where everything begins and > ends. I wonder if resolving bug 140263 would help. > Also, when inserting a table and editing it, the cell borders show up when > selecting the table itself, but not when simply editing it. So it's very > difficult to edit, since you pretty much edit it blindly when you remove the > default background color. It would be helpful if the cell borders would > always be shown except in presentation mode, e.g. in gray, so you see they > aren't really there but are only shown as a visual guide. Good points. A non-printable border should always show, so a table without border can still be located, like in Writer. Similar to what is asked for text boxes in bug 62494.
> This has been reported in bug 50359. Thanks, I didn't notice > I wonder if resolving bug 140263 would help. That would actually be a big help. > Good points. A non-printable border should always show, so a table without border can still be located, like in Writer. Similar to what is asked for text boxes in bug 62494. Exactly, this would be very helpful.
OK, keeping this report open for making all objects' boundaries easier to locate in Impress (and Draw), including tables. I can see how having a faint outline on all objects on the slide/page would help in many cases, especially the images with transparent or white backgrounds and tables with transparent or white outer borders. This could be triggered while dragging a selection with the mouse, as well as when moving a selection by pressing arrows multiple times, with a small timeout before disappearing. It could also/instead be an extra option in View > Grid and Helplines to always show those boundaries (and in Options dialog, as I see it as a profile-level setting rather than a document setting). UX team, what do you think?
Could be a noisy view but sounds reasonable.
I think, that it would be useful for Impress to have a special view to show all those helping things. It should be a toggle with .uno:command, so that you can quickly enable/disable it with icon or shortcut. Candidates to show are e.g. edge of presentation objects 'title' and 'outline', images, tables, groups, textboxes and fields non-visible characters tab, line-break, paragraph end field shading of list numbering hot spot in image map (In reply to Stéphane Guillou (stragu) from comment #3) > This could be triggered while dragging a selection with the mouse, as well > as when moving a selection by pressing arrows multiple times, with a small > timeout before disappearing. If you have already accessed the object, it is too late. You need such help for to access the object.
So let's do it. (In reply to Regina Henschel from comment #5) > If you have already accessed the object, it is too late. Not if the main focus is on positioning.
In Version: 25.2.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community Build ID: d8c694b5d64b05da8c515e4ffe23c4bcc2376b0f CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 5.15; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3 Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US Calc: threaded there is View > Grid and Helplines > Helplines While Moving resolved/WFM
hmm, maybe I closed a bug that has multiple objects, while only one is resolved ;) better split the other(s) off then :)
(In reply to Cor Nouws from comment #7) > there is View > Grid and Helplines > Helplines While Moving > resolved/WFM OP was already aware of that setting in description. The ask is (to have a command) to show outlines of all objects, not only the one being moved. See also comment 3 and comment 5. Setting back to "new".
(In reply to Stéphane Guillou (stragu) from comment #9) > (In reply to Cor Nouws from comment #7) > > there is View > Grid and Helplines > Helplines While Moving > > resolved/WFM > OP was already aware of that setting in description. The ask is (to have a > command) to show outlines of all objects, not only the one being moved. See > also comment 3 and comment 5. Setting back to "new". Fair enough, Stéphane :) Still the bugs summary is confusing/not matching that solution?
I haven't compiled 25.2 myself, so I can't tell if there even has been any changes, but from the comments here I judge that this doesn't really fix anything. The gist of my feature request is that grabbing a vector graphic that doesn't have a background is a royal pain to get a "grip" on it to be even able to move them. That's my biggest issue. Adding to that, arranging objects on the slide is sadly wastly more difficult than it would be in PowerPoint. With the latter, pretty much anything is a point to be able to snap to. From the edges of an image - visibale or white/transparent - various points of a vector graphic to various proportinal distances. LibreOffice Impress sadly lacks a lot of these. Now I can't tell if that now actually has been added, but one basic feature that would be helpful would be to draw a border around every object, representing the actual edges to make sure that they are visible, so you can make sure they are not overlapping with each other without moving the object far enough to see overlap. And the third issue is with tables, that they behave annoyingly different to how they work in Writer. Sure, you could argue this is three different things, but they do all relate to one headline: visual aids/cues to make creating a presentation with more "advanced/modern" objects beyond muddy jpegs and text boxes less of an unbearable chore because things behave like they haven't been thought over in the last decade or two concerning usability. Not to mention that they feel like they have never been evaluated in the first place when support for tables or vector graphics were added in the first place, and like there is just no communication between the people implementing a feature in one of the applications and the people implementing the same thing in the other ones.
// pls allow me to suggest, without judging on any of the individual issues, that this report is a grab bag of various ideas and annoyances. The suggested improvement in comment 5 is likely to help only partly, if at all.
(In reply to Cor Nouws from comment #12) > // pls allow me to suggest, without judging on any of the individual issues, > that this report is a grab bag of various ideas and annoyances. The > suggested improvement in comment 5 is likely to help only partly, if at all. It would be most certainly be more helpful than pointing out a well known feature that has guaranteed no improvement at all. Because the "Helplines While Moving" are only drawn around the object you are moving, not around all objects present in the slide.
(In reply to rrosner5 from comment #11) > The gist of my feature request is that grabbing a vector graphic that > doesn't have a background is a royal pain to get a "grip" on it to be even > able to move them. That's my biggest issue. As mentioned before, this is already tracked in bug 50359. Let's keep things separate. > Adding to that, arranging > objects on the slide is sadly wastly more difficult than it would be in > PowerPoint. With the latter, pretty much anything is a point to be able to > snap to. I agree with you. > LibreOffice Impress sadly lacks a lot of these. Now I can't tell if that now > actually has been added, but one basic feature that would be helpful would > be to draw a border around every object, representing the actual edges to > make sure that they are visible, so you can make sure they are not > overlapping with each other without moving the object far enough to see > overlap. Let's focus on this here. > And the third issue is with tables, that they behave annoyingly different to > how they work in Writer. Let's have a separate report for that, please. > Sure, you could argue this is three different things, but they do all relate > to one headline: visual aids/cues to make creating a presentation with more > "advanced/modern" objects beyond muddy jpegs and text boxes less of an > unbearable chore because things behave like they haven't been thought over > in the last decade or two concerning usability. Not to mention that they > feel like they have never been evaluated in the first place when support for > tables or vector graphics were added in the first place, and like there is > just no communication between the people implementing a feature in one of > the applications and the people implementing the same thing in the other > ones. Joining the Design/UX team to participate in wider-ranging discussions and decision-making would be a great help to give this kind of direction. https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design On Bugzilla, we have to try to have focused tickets if we're hoping to have developers pick them up and solve them. The "option to show all objects' outlines" is clearly defined and has support, see comment 3, comment 5, comment 6. I've clarified the summary.
I've now opened two other issues for the other two parts. Experimenting with this I noticed that all of these bugs are lack of consistency between Writer and the rest of the suite, as none of them are an issue in Writer, but they all are in Impress and Draw. Concerning the "make all objects' outlines visible" it would be enough to just use the behavior of Writer. It will draw a thin gray border around the graphic that's present all of the time. You could of course argue that this may not be desired by all, so an option to disable this behavior could be beneficial for some users, but I think it's important to have consistency throughout the whole suite.