Description: If the borders of a text field are removed in LibreOffice Writer, they become invisible because they blend in with the white color of the page. PDF viewers, such as Mozilla Firefox (or Adobe Acrobat), color these fields in a transparent shade of blue. There are several possible solutions: that a default color could be chosen in the application color options; that activating the form's design mode would automatically apply some visual aid; or that blue would always be the default color when out of focus of the text field. Otherwise, even if you make use of the form browser, it is complicated to work with forms in LibreOffice, and other alternatives such as changing the page background interfere with the work of designing the document. Thanks for your work. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Enable design mode in the form tools 2. Create a text field 3. In properties, disable de frame leaving the default background and border color. Actual Results: The text field blends in with the white background color of the page. Expected Results: Una ayuda visual que identifique la localización de los campos de texto. Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: No Additional Info: Version: 24.2.0.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community Build ID: b1fd3a6f0759c6f806568e15c957f97194bbec8f CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win Locale: es-ES (es_ES); UI: es-ES Calc: CL threaded
Created attachment 191979 [details] Example document
Created attachment 191980 [details] Example PDF
Created attachment 191981 [details] Writer screenshot
Created attachment 191982 [details] Firefox screenshot
Another option is to let the user decide, aka resolve this ticket as WF. If we replace the background with Light Blue 4, for example, users still can change it to white. But I wonder why the default background being dark grey is transparent.
The fields will be colored in Firefox here. It will be set with light borders in Okular. But on both (and other readers) the content will be saved without this background and without the border. So if it has been printed it is content without background or border. So the only problem is: If you use such a kind of form fields inside of LO you wouldn't see there is a field. There should be something to set in menu "View" (like "Field Shadings" in a different color) for form controls. So you get the same behavior as in many viewers: You could see where to input data, but you won't see the fields when printing the content.
The option to let the user decide may be fine if it is done through Writer's color settings. But the transparent background, at least in my work, is always chosen to generate official forms, so it is not a matter of taste, it is because we need the background to be transparent and in that box is only the text, especially when printing, as Robert says. But when designing them we lose the limits of these transparent fields, and it is very complicated to work. Thanks first of all for your interest, it is amazing to see from the inside how active the LibreOffice development community is.
In addition, it should be noted that Writer is not only designed to generate PDF forms, but its functionality also allows you to fill in these forms using the application. Thanks again. Regards.
(In reply to Robert Großkopf from comment #6) > There should be something ... like "Field Shadings" How about this solution? We could keep the field shading color and interaction, and highlight the form controls similar to any other field, if the option is checked.
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #9) > (In reply to Robert Großkopf from comment #6) > > There should be something ... like "Field Shadings" > > How about this solution? We could keep the field shading color and > interaction, and highlight the form controls similar to any other field, if > the option is checked. We could use the same behavior as for Content Controls (Writer → Form → Content Controls → Plain Text) for example. But this should only appear if there is no border and no visible background chosen for the form control.
(In reply to Robert Großkopf from comment #10) > We could use the same behavior as for Content Controls... Good point. The CCs are highlighted depending on Field Shading AND selection, both merged if checked.
Let's fix it by binding the form controls to the field shading options. If should merge with the background color, if set. If needed, later, we may introduce an extra color for form controls (but I don't think another highlight switch makes senseI).