Bug 158874 - Want MS-Word like auto-formatting of beginning of list item
Summary: Want MS-Word like auto-formatting of beginning of list item
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LibreOffice (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
7.6.4.1 release
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: AutoCorrect-Complete
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Reported: 2023-12-26 21:29 UTC by Eyal Rozenberg
Modified: 2024-05-23 06:40 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
MS Word AutoCorrect options, Autoformat As You Type pane; see third-from-last checkbox (68.01 KB, image/png)
2023-12-26 21:29 UTC, Eyal Rozenberg
Details
Screencast of MS Word behavior (5.93 MB, video/mp4)
2024-05-11 15:11 UTC, Eyal Rozenberg
Details

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Description Eyal Rozenberg 2023-12-26 21:29:43 UTC
Created attachment 191600 [details]
MS Word AutoCorrect options, Autoformat As You Type pane; see third-from-last checkbox

In MS Word, one of the Auto-format "as-you-type" capabilities is: "Format beginning of list item like the one before it".

To be honest, I'm not too thrilled about this feature - since one has to change format after the beginning-part to the non-beginning-part format - but apparently some users like it.

Perhaps we should also offer it, for feature parity?
Comment 1 Eyal Rozenberg 2023-12-26 21:30:11 UTC
Note that the MS Word feature works both for DF and for character styles.
Comment 2 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2024-01-10 14:05:44 UTC
Currently, applying formatting to a bullet changes the formatting of the whole list's bullets.

Can you describe exactly what MS Word's "Format beginning of list item like the one before it" does? I don't think its label is completely self-explanatory.
Does it change the beginning of the paragraph? For example: "first five characters of each item is bold"?

I guess this is the corresponding setting: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/Word.Options.AutoFormatAsYouTypeFormatListItemBeginning
Comment 3 Eyal Rozenberg 2024-01-12 13:19:55 UTC
(In reply to Stéphane Guillou (stragu) from comment #2)
> Currently, applying formatting to a bullet changes the formatting of the
> whole list's bullets.
> 
> Can you describe exactly what MS Word's "Format beginning of list item like
> the one before it" does? I don't think its label is completely
> self-explanatory.
> Does it change the beginning of the paragraph? For example: "first five
> characters of each item is bold"?

It doesn't format the bullet (or at least, that's not what I've tried doing with it); it formats the text, i.e. applies Character DF or a named Character Style for the text you start typing after pressing Enter at the end of a list item paragraph.
Comment 4 QA Administrators 2024-01-13 03:13:23 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 5 Heiko Tietze 2024-01-15 12:26:04 UTC
The AutoCorrect function "Bulleted and numbered lists. Bullet symbol: *" (what an awkward label) adds a list style to "* <text>" as DF (the option is off by default). The following paragraph inherits the list style, and the MSO option apparently allows to prevent this. I see non use in such an option as it makes handling with lists much more difficult compared to the simple click on the list toolbar button. => WF
Comment 6 Eyal Rozenberg 2024-01-15 12:44:50 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #5)

I believe you're misunderstanding, this is not about the list style; not about the formatting of the bullet symbol. It's about the character style at the beginning of the paragraph of text.
Comment 7 Heiko Tietze 2024-01-15 14:18:40 UTC
There is no character formatting happening, even MSO talks about "list item before" (list item = paragraph). And the PS has a LS attached, I think either empty or with some data rather than none and some. In any case it is not a CS (neither we apply any here).
Comment 8 Eyal Rozenberg 2024-01-16 00:21:01 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #7)
> There is no character formatting happening,

Yes, there is. (An MSO user complained about this to me and I reproduced it.)

If you're not seeing it, I suppose I could create a screencast...
Comment 9 QA Administrators 2024-01-17 03:13:04 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 10 Heiko Tietze 2024-01-17 08:14:39 UTC Comment hidden (no-value)
Comment 11 Heiko Tietze 2024-01-31 09:19:43 UTC
Feel free to reopen with the screencast.
Comment 12 Eyal Rozenberg 2024-05-11 15:11:25 UTC
Created attachment 194085 [details]
Screencast of MS Word behavior

Screencast of how MS Word autoformats initial phrase on a line, based on the formatting of that phrase on the previous line, in a bulleted list.
Comment 13 Eyal Rozenberg 2024-05-11 15:11:53 UTC
Heiko FYI.
Comment 14 Heiko Tietze 2024-05-13 14:04:36 UTC
Confirming the nifty function in MS Word: colon, semicolon, question and exclamation mark, hyphen are stop tokens, at least. Works with DF and CS.
Comment 15 Heiko Tietze 2024-05-23 06:40:19 UTC
We discussed the topic in the design meeting and welcome the proposed new autocorrection.