Sometimes you want to have numbered paragraphs in one text box, but instead of continuing with another numbered paragraph on the same textbox you need to split them in two. Example: Next slide in an Impress presentation. When you do that, you typically want to continue the numbering from the previous textbox - but you can't. At best, you can manually set the starting number for the second widget. It would be useful if we could link widgets for the purposes of having the second widget'sd numbering continue the first widget's.
What's wrong with the "start at" option? Sure, there might be more convenient ways but we are in Impress and the benefit does not justify the effort.
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #1) > What's wrong with the "start at" option? That's a manual setting. If I set a "Start at" value, then the previous slide gets an extra item or one less item, the current slide isn't updated with a +1 or -1.
In Writer, there is the choice '[] Restart numbering' for lists (on by default?). I think that should do the trick?
(In reply to Cor Nouws from comment #3) > In Writer, there is the choice '[] Restart numbering' for lists (on by > default?). > I think that should do the trick? Perhaps.. but note that a difficult aspect is deciding which box is supposed to continue the numbering from which box. It may seem obvious to us as users when we duplicate a slide and keep the main content box, but in the general case it is not at all obvious. It is possible that the UI would need to offer the user the decision of where to continue numbering from. Still, I won't bikeshed the details; even a heuristic decision for what is the "previous box" would be an ok start if that's how it's implemented.
We discussed the topic in the design meeting. It would be desirable to have proper paragraph styles in Impress too (bug 152653) that also uses a list style as known from Writer including "[ ] Restart numbering". This has been requested in bug 40871, which was duplicated into META bug 152652.
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #5) > This has been requested in bug 40871... As well in bug 137297.
It's a design decision. Of course, the request is understood and most useful. Though, looking at the 13-year-history of the grandma bug, it seems a difficult matter. My initial thought was the introduction of a 'box dragout' architectural addition. Like page break, where numbering and formatting are no problem at continuing on another page. Taking a box, drawing, whatever, and dragging a placeholder anywhere else. Then, the content is handled as a single item w.r.t. format, numbering, only locally separated and placed elsewhere. Then, incrementing a list in the second (sub-)box will automatically increment the list numbers in the subsequent boxes. And applying a style to a part of the objects is applied to the parts with the same style in all 'dragged-out' parts; wherever they are actually located in the 'dragged-out' boxes. How's that?