Bug 151068 - Add calculated tooltips to cells
Summary: Add calculated tooltips to cells
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Calc (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
unspecified
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Calc-UX
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Reported: 2022-09-19 20:27 UTC by robert
Modified: 2022-11-08 12:39 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

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Description robert 2022-09-19 20:27:15 UTC
When hovering over cells, it's possible to show tooltips. What would for me, and the people around me, really be an absolute killer feature if a tooltip could change dynamically, i.e. if hovering over a cell on the cross-roads between day-of-the-month and weekday, it would for example show us the month when the ***next***, just to give an example, Friday the 13th would be, based on the 1st row/column data, and the today() function as a formula inside the tooltip, with the update only triggered upon hovering for "longer" over the cell, where "longer" is a user-defined time.

And yes, it's obviously possible to do this in another always visible cell, but if your sheet is big, this "other" cell may require scrolling, whether to reach this info, or if it's next to the cell, to reach other cells with "real" data.

No clue is something like this is present in "that" (or any other) product, but I wouldn't be surprised if MS also keeps an eye on what's happening here...
Comment 1 Eike Rathke 2022-09-19 22:03:01 UTC
Do you mean a calculated tooltip like a formula expression with relative references that recalculates on each cell hovered over?
Comment 2 Rafael Lima 2022-09-19 23:03:22 UTC
Apparently users have worked around the lack of actual tooltips in cells using Comments [1] or Help messages from Validity rules [2].

[1] https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=64099

[2] https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/custom-mouseover-tooltips-on-cells/50958

However, none of them are dynamic, i.e. whose tooltip text would depend on the cell contents.

I have already found myself needing a feature similar as this one. Maybe we could have a tooltip option where a possible value would be a Calc formula that generates the tooltip.
Comment 3 robert 2022-09-20 07:25:03 UTC
(In reply to Eike Rathke from comment #1)
> Do you mean a calculated tooltip like a formula expression with relative
> references that recalculates on each cell hovered over?

That might be quite useful in other situations, but I just want to have a per-cell tooltip for only specific cells that dynamically depends on data in that and/or other cells, like what I wrote, if I hover on a cell that's at the intersection of a sheet containing a head-row of days-of-the-month (1..31) and a head-column with days-of-the-week (Mo..Su) I would like it to show a tooltip telling me "The next Friday 13 is in January 2023" and the recalculation and showing of the tooltip would only happen if I hover over the cell for a user-defined extended time. And for what it's worth, a little green dot at the bottom could be used to indicate the presence of such a dynamic tooltip, just as the current little red dot indicates a normal comment tooltip.
Comment 4 robert 2022-09-21 06:34:50 UTC
This just slipped into my mind, but in "essence" you could see the tooltip "cell" as one in the third dimension, the spreadsheet becomes a (very limited) spread-cube.
Comment 5 Roman Kuznetsov 2022-10-29 20:49:43 UTC
Better to have explicit data in cells of your spreadsheet

Your idea will give us:
1. Performance problems
2. Absolutely unobvious UX

-1 from my side
Comment 6 robert 2022-10-29 21:08:11 UTC
(In reply to Roman Kuznetsov from comment #5)
> Better to have explicit data in cells of your spreadsheet
> 
> Your idea will give us:
> 1. Performance problems
> 2. Absolutely unobvious UX

That other company has never cared about "Absolutely unobvious UX". Ever tried to modify graphs? Just unzipping the ODS and editing one of the many "contents.xml" is almost easier!

And please explain why would this affect performance?
Comment 7 Heiko Tietze 2022-11-07 09:37:25 UTC
The example from ask.libo is striking, list the temperature by default in Celsius but show Fahrenheit in tooltip. But I see no way to define this dynamically. Imagine a formula =1+1 and on top you want to set =tooltip("Foo"). The proposed "solution" is the comment, which shows up on hover but is not dynamical. Could imagine a function that updates all comments on click, for example by calculating = *9/5 + 32. This clearly needs to be an extension.

What do you think, Robert?
Comment 8 robert 2022-11-07 10:31:47 UTC
The Celcius / Fahrenheit example is very good, as is the suggestion to have the comments updated on a click, and there seem to be plenty of "alternate" F9 key bindings free to do just that, or, as I suggested adding a green (or whatever colour) dot to a cell with such a updatable tooltip would be another solution. 

And where I suggested that the tooltip be an extension of the sheet to a cube, another way would be to treat the tooltip as a single-cell sheet, same difference...

Question I have is, "Why an extension?" as for me this would be a core functionality!
Comment 9 QA Administrators 2022-11-08 03:49:02 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 10 robert 2022-11-08 09:38:59 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #7)
> The example from ask.libo is striking, list the temperature by default in
> Celsius but show Fahrenheit in tooltip. But I see no way to define this
> dynamically. Imagine a formula =1+1 and on top you want to set
> =tooltip("Foo"). The proposed "solution" is the comment, which shows up on
> hover but is not dynamical. Could imagine a function that updates all
> comments on click, for example by calculating = *9/5 + 32. This clearly
> needs to be an extension.
> 
> What do you think, Robert?

Just this morning, I realised that Calc already has a kind of a built-in "Calculating tooltip" feature, in casu the field in the toolbar that can display Count, Sum, Average, etc of the selected cells, even for unconnected (and selected by Shift-click) cells, and all at the same time!
Comment 11 Heiko Tietze 2022-11-08 10:08:49 UTC
(In reply to robert from comment #8)
> Question I have is, "Why an extension?" as for me this would be a core
> functionality!

Thing is that I see no way to enter a second function into a cell. And if you apply ordinary comments you need to change it dynamically and in a flexible way, which would be an extension. 

Don't understand the toolbar comment.
Comment 12 robert 2022-11-08 10:14:17 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #11)

> Don't understand the toolbar comment.

Apologies, the Statusbar at the bottom.
Comment 13 Heiko Tietze 2022-11-08 10:27:11 UTC
(In reply to robert from comment #12)
> Apologies, the Statusbar at the bottom.

The statusbar provides flexible access to the most common functions. If you calculate the Count(), for example, it will update the statusbar info on this panel depending on the selection. Your request is about a programmable tooltip per cell. 

Anyway, I like the idea and obviously it can be realized only per extra dialog / interaction. It could be an entry "Insert Tooltip" in the context menu that shows a small dialog or floating widget accepting functions like =A1*9/5+32 or text ="Celsius". In order to not need to enter the value for every single cell I would allow pasting special just this (and update the cell reference unless it's fix). Don't see a similar feature at competitors so we have to store it in some extra document space and communicate that it would be lost on round trips. 

All quite some hurdles which could be solved per macro / extension.
Comment 14 robert 2022-11-08 12:31:05 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #13)
> (In reply to robert from comment #12)
> > Apologies, the Statusbar at the bottom.
> 
> The statusbar provides flexible access to the most common functions. If you
> calculate the Count(), for example, it will update the statusbar info on
> this panel depending on the selection. Your request is about a programmable
> tooltip per cell. 

Yes, but wouldn't that be (very) different from the code that now updates the info panel in the status bar with the various figures? In fact it might be simpler, as the status bar figures might depend on (multiple) selected ranges, and (multiple) individually selected cells!
 
> Anyway, I like the idea and obviously it can be realized only per extra
> dialog / interaction. 

And would that be a problem? How many extra dialogs / interactions have been added since the granddaddy of them all, VisiCalc?

> It could be an entry "Insert Tooltip" in the context
> menu that shows a small dialog or floating widget accepting functions like
> =A1*9/5+32 or text ="Celsius". In order to not need to enter the value for
> every single cell I would allow pasting special just this (and update the
> cell reference unless it's fix).

Or some general approach where a range of cells can all use this tooltip, which would automagically use the current cell in the formula, i.e. something like "='this-cell'*9/5+32"

> Don't see a similar feature at competitors
> so we have to store it in some extra document space 

Like a virtual sheet/cell? There may be options in the spec that would allow it?  MS RTF has the '{\*\whatever...}' tag to support older versions of word that don't understand "whatever", and just ignore it. I don't think the Open Document Format is set in concrete, and this might be a very useful new feature to add to a next version!

> and communicate that it would be lost on round trips. 

Just as the "This document contains features that cannot be saved in <fill in the blanks> this MS format?" message-box? So what?

> All quite some hurdles which could be solved per macro / extension.

Which, call me a cynic, would neatly remove the need of The Document Foundation to be involved with it.
Comment 15 robert 2022-11-08 12:39:48 UTC
Maybe a too far-fetched comparison, but did AMD give any consideration to Intel, and existing software when they redefined the "INC reg"/"DEC reg" instructions to create the AMD64 architecture? 

The question is rhetorical...