Bug 160764 - Request: Set the Navigator viewport to default to Headings rather than Sections
Summary: Request: Set the Navigator viewport to default to Headings rather than Sections
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 144817
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
unspecified
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: needsUXEval
Depends on:
Blocks: Navigator
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2024-04-21 14:29 UTC by John.m.astell
Modified: 2024-04-23 18:32 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Sample 1 document showing behavior with no sections in document (64.01 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2024-04-22 17:55 UTC, John.m.astell
Details
Sample document 2 showing behavior in a document with sections (61.46 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2024-04-22 17:55 UTC, John.m.astell
Details

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Description John.m.astell 2024-04-21 14:29:40 UTC
Description:
Issue: When I do not have any sections defined in a document, the Navigator viewport (in the Sidebar Deck) defaults to showing my position in the Headings (unless I click on an image, table, hyperlink, etc., when it then shows the object I have clicked). Once I define sections, LO defaults to show which section I am in rather than which heading. (To be clear: Clicking in the text of document has the viewport show the heading of the text, which is very useful.)

Defaulting to sections rather than heading is not helpful for me and likely some perhaps very many users. I for example have many headings and very few sections, so knowing what section I am in is not useful.

Possible Solutions:
1. Rethink whether Headings should have precedent over Sections. If so, change the default behavior.
2. If you decide Sections should still be the default, add a user option (in Options or wherever appropriate) to allow the use to change the default behavior.

Steps to Reproduce:
Enhancement Request

Actual Results:
Enhancement Request

Expected Results:
Enhancement Request


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:
Aside: I have documents that use two columns of text (set in Page Style). On rare occasions, I need a part of page to be in just one column. The is achieved through use of Sections, so I cannot avoid using Sections in these cases.
Comment 1 V Stuart Foote 2024-04-21 15:34:25 UTC
Can't confirm.

YMMV but just take the Content Navigation out of 'Section' mode.

1. toggle *off* the 'Content Navigation View' button
2. select 'Headings' from the drop list of document objects, or select something from the document tree
3. toggle *on* the 'Content Navigation View' button

The Navigation View (and previous/next movement buttons) should list just the Headings (or whichever document object type was selected).

And IIUC the ODF document model supports placement of headers (and most other document objects) inside of sections--hide the section to see the behavior.

If there is something more needed than that, need better description of the issue and workflow.

Version: 24.2.2.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: d56cc158d8a96260b836f100ef4b4ef25d6f1a01
CPU threads: 8; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: Skia/Vulkan; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded
Comment 2 John.m.astell 2024-04-22 14:59:37 UTC
V Stuart Foote's comment on "just take the Content Navigation out of 'Section' mode" is a suboptimal solution. Switching to headers in this way only shows the Headers and without the other useful items like Images, Footnotes, Hyperlinks. Turning off Content Navigation then reverts to the issue described in the original post.
Comment 3 V Stuart Foote 2024-04-22 16:03:44 UTC
Hmm, then I can not confirm, nor understand your initial post.

When not in a 'Content Navigation' (the button not "depressed") mode selecting a document object will shift nav mode focus to that object. Cursor focus into paragraph text doesn't.

Navigation mode aside, if I need to move between Headings the Navigator UI now provides the mouseover flash on the document page and context menu 'Go to' action for movement when out of current view port.

I am not "defaulting" to Sections in any sense and can move freely between the document object content.
Comment 4 John.m.astell 2024-04-22 17:55:06 UTC
Created attachment 193804 [details]
Sample 1 document showing behavior with no sections in document
Comment 5 John.m.astell 2024-04-22 17:55:47 UTC
Created attachment 193805 [details]
Sample document 2 showing behavior in a document with sections
Comment 6 John.m.astell 2024-04-22 17:58:12 UTC
Sample1_NoSections.odt is a sample document with no sections defined.

Have the Sidebar Deck set to Navigator. Click anywhere in document except in/on an object like an image, table, or hyperlink. The highlight in the Navigator’s hierarchy view goes to the appropriate heading. If you click on an image or in a table or a hyperlink, the highlight in the Navigator’s hierarchy view goes to the image/table/hyperlink.

All of this is extremely useful. The issue occurs when there are sections in the document.

Sample2_HasTwoSections.odt is a sample document using sections.

Have the Sidebar Deck set to Navigator. Have Content Navigation View on. Click anywhere in document except in/on an object like an image, table, or hyperlink. The highlight in the Navigator’s hierarchy view goes to the governing section. This behavior is far less useful for me that going to the governing heading. I have lots of heading and few sections, as I suspect many/most users have.
Note that if you click on an image or in a table or a hyperlink, the highlight in the Navigator’s hierarchy view goes to the image/table/hyperlink. This is the same behavior in a document without sections.

Turn off Content Navigation View. Set Navigate By to Headings. Turn on Content Navigation View. Now, when clicking in the document the highlight moves to the appropriate heading. However, only headings are displayed in the hierarchy view, so clicking an image/table/hyperlink moves the highlight to the heading, rather than the image/table/hyperlink as before. The latter behavior is much more useful to me.

The issue is that in either case, the utility to the user is reduced from what happens when there are no sections. Hence my original feature enhance request.
Comment 7 V Stuart Foote 2024-04-22 22:29:51 UTC
OK, thanks for the test doc. With sample 2 (attachment 193805 [details]) there is something not correct with the Navigation mode.

Easily demonstrable by entering 'Headings' Navigation mode--then using the 'Previous Heading' or 'Next Heading'.  

The SB Navigator deck focus highlight should move from Heading to Heading.

Instead while the edit cursor focus on canvas does move to next or previous Heading button action, the SB deck focus highlight jumps to the Sections objects and remains there--even though edit cursor focus is moving between header

@Jim, any ideas?
Comment 8 Jim Raykowski 2024-04-23 04:29:02 UTC
I didn't see that it had been tried to turn off section tracking. To do this, right-click on 'Sections' or an entry under Sections then uncheck 'Section Tracking'.
Comment 9 Heiko Tietze 2024-04-23 08:00:21 UTC
(In reply to Jim Raykowski from comment #8)
> I didn't see that it had been tried to turn off section tracking. To do
> this, right-click on 'Sections' or an entry under Sections then uncheck
> 'Section Tracking'.
How about defaulting to off?
Comment 10 V Stuart Foote 2024-04-23 15:38:24 UTC
Oh crud! How'd I miss the persistent category tracking for all the categories done for bug 145132 at 7.3 [1] all still set with true defaults as currently refactored [2].

So the per content category context menu "tracking" toggle is toggled enabled by default when inserting new Sections. And verified the attachment 193805 [details] sample document 2 has it set, also that when I toggle it off, the Heading category navigation behaves with no jump into the encompassing section.

Also verified that if toggled disabled, newly inserted sections observe the persistent toggle disabled. 

In addition to the context menu toggle, the Navigator "SectionTracking" value can be set via Expert Configuration, or manually edited in the LO registrymodifications.xcu at:

<item oor:path="/org.openoffice.Office.Writer/Navigator"><prop oor:name="SectionTracking" oor:op="fuse"><value>false</value></prop></item>

Sorry for the noise Jim, *

=-ref-=
[1] https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/122874
[2] https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/129981

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 144817 ***
Comment 11 V Stuart Foote 2024-04-23 15:40:08 UTC
testing with

Version: 24.2.2.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: d56cc158d8a96260b836f100ef4b4ef25d6f1a01
CPU threads: 8; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: Skia/Vulkan; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded
Comment 12 Jim Raykowski 2024-04-23 18:32:04 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #9)
> How about defaulting to off?
+1