Since the following additions in the sidebar's Properties deck: - Table panel (for Writer, introduced in LO 6.4, fixing Bug 95279) - extra editing options in the Table Design panel (for Impress and Draw, introduced in LO 7.5) It could be argued that a sidebar deck dedicated to tables is needed, giving more space to previews, lumping together all table-related functions, and allowing creating Table Designs without having to create a table in the first place. Maxim Monastirsky considers a dedicated panel in: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=151185#c9 Also considered in: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=95279#c0 Potential pros: - Make the UI more consistent across components (Writer, Impress, Draw) - Give more space to table-specific controls, given how many there are - Allows creating Table Designs without creating a table in the first place This enhancement request is probably blocked by the lack of consistency between Writer's Table Styles / AutoFormat Styles in Writer and Calc, and Table Design in Impress and Draw, which are completely different implementations of table styles. Relevant questions: - Will Table Designs replace (/ be merged with) the table styles / AutoFormats Writer has? - Are we fracturing the styles UI, that should all belong in the Styles deck? - Are we fracturing the Properties deck, that should contain all the formatting options? There is relevant discussion on this topic in this Table Design commit review: https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/140943 Maxim, Rafael, UX team, copying you in for input.
+1
We discussed the topic in the design meeting. A special tab requires a reasonable number of controls and a distinctive workflow so switching between properties (or another tab) and the to be introduced table tab is not needed too often. We think it's the fact here. (Automatically switching depending on the context would be a mistake.) (In reply to Stéphane Guillou (stragu) from comment #0) > - Will Table Designs replace (/ be merged with) the table styles / > AutoFormats Writer has? > - Are we fracturing the styles UI, that should all belong in the Styles deck? The table style is part of the manipulation and should be placed together with the other commands on the new tab, perhaps in an extra deck. And bug 101802 requests to "Consolidate Writer and Draw/Impress sidebar table design content panel". > - Are we fracturing the Properties deck, that should contain all the > formatting options? Properties should remain as it is for text editing. The supposed workflow is to create and style a table in the dedicated tab and work on the content with the properties tab open.