Bug 160194 - Add all 3 Spotlight commands (Paragraph Style, Character Style, Direct Formatting) to Style Inspector
Summary: Add all 3 Spotlight commands (Paragraph Style, Character Style, Direct Format...
Status: ASSIGNED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
7.6.0.3 release
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Karthik
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: difficultyMedium, easyHack, skillCpp, topicUI
Depends on:
Blocks: Style-Inspector
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Reported: 2024-03-14 04:21 UTC by Stéphane Guillou (stragu)
Modified: 2025-03-19 21:18 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

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Description Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2024-03-14 04:21:17 UTC
The new spotlight features (for paragraph styles, character styles and direct formatting) we got in LO 7.6 are a great match for using with the Style Inspector, which lists details about all three.

I suggest adding three tick boxes in the sidebar to control these commands:

Spotlight:
[ ] Paragraph Styles [ ] Character Styles [ ] Direct Formatting

Because of the length of the labels, icons might be a better fit, to keep it in a single row:

Spotlight: [PS] [CS] [DF]

Relevant UNO commands are:
.uno:SpotlightParaStyles (since 24.2)
.uno:SpotlightCharStyles (since 24.2)
.uno:HighlightCharDF (since 7.6)
Comment 1 Heiko Tietze 2024-03-14 09:01:38 UTC
The spotlight is available via Stylist for PS and CS and the main menu for all three. Another route to enable the view sounds like over-engineering to me and clutters the simple Styles Inspector unnecessarily.
Comment 2 V Stuart Foote 2024-03-15 14:36:51 UTC
While available to activate as individual checkboxes now from main menu Format -> Spotlight, or as single checkbox on each of the SB Stylist deck for PS or CS. And the UNO can be further customized for KB or menu/contextmenu use.
 
But Spotlight's ability to visually locate paragraph or character styles applied in document text makes it very useful for making pointer selections when working from the SB 'Style Inspector' deck.

I have to agree that having a checkbox toggle for each of the three current Spotlight flavors available on the 'Style Inspector' deck would make for better UX--enable disable from there. And would self-guide users in the style review of their page content.

+1
Comment 3 Heiko Tietze 2024-04-02 09:37:04 UTC
We discussed the topic in the design meeting.

Adding controls clutters the UI and is not really in scope of the workflow (you inspect an element and it's quite unlikely that you need to know where this style is used). But the majority thinks the drawback is negligible and some users might benefit from the enhancement.

Code pointer:
svx/uiconfig/ui/inspectortextpanel.ui
svx/source/sidebar/inspector/InspectorTextPanel.cxx
Comment 4 Heiko Tietze 2024-07-01 09:38:57 UTC
Patch https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/166381 abandoned due to inactivity
Comment 5 Karthik 2025-03-10 08:12:20 UTC
I implemented this feature in this patch
https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/182716

I directly used names has labels for checkboxes instead of icons, I wasn't sure what icons to use for
- Paragraph Styles
- Character Styles
- Direct Formatting
Comment 6 V Stuart Foote 2025-03-19 21:18:06 UTC
(In reply to Karthik from comment #5)
> I implemented this feature in this patch
> https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/182716
> 
> I directly used names has labels for checkboxes instead of icons, I wasn't
> sure what icons to use for
> - Paragraph Styles
> - Character Styles
> - Direct Formatting

I see the new Labels and "accordion" exposure arrows visible in the Style Inspector showing description of the styles or direct formatting. Listing in the SI changing depending on edit cursor position into the document. 

But other than the exposure arrow to expand or collapse the description, there is *no interaction* with the document canvas--no indication of where edit cursor has focus. 

/me confused... was there supposed to be some additional function for the Style Inspector to even need to list details of the Spotlight of DF and Styles? Seems like it would need linkage into the GUI representation of the Style and DF to be of use. Otherwise, no better than just opening the associated style or applied DF to review format.

=-testing-=

Version: 25.8.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 4957d832c76598e78a57324dad5b4de7345a33e2
CPU threads: 28; OS: Windows 11 X86_64 (build 26100); UI render: Skia/Vulkan; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded