Bug 167108 - Introduce an option to use horizontal tabs instead vertical
Summary: Introduce an option to use horizontal tabs instead vertical
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: UI (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
unspecified
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Heiko Tietze
URL:
Whiteboard: target:26.2.0
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Vertical-Tab-dialogs
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Reported: 2025-06-19 08:28 UTC by Heiko Tietze
Modified: 2025-07-10 09:49 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


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Description Heiko Tietze 2025-06-19 08:28:00 UTC
While most display are widescreen nowadays, some users might not want the dialogs in this layout or rotate the screen and need to save horizontal space. The VT should be optional in this case.

Could be a condition at VclBuilder::makeObject()  #1861: if (name == "GtkNotebook")
Comment 1 Heiko Tietze 2025-06-19 08:33:32 UTC
This requires of course to hide the icons. But first of all to not crash the application if the tab label is a subitem of a box.
Comment 2 V Stuart Foote 2025-06-19 11:39:47 UTC
+1, but should be selectable from Tools ->  Options and not expert config. 

Prefer to move the entire UI to vertical tabs (when a dialog/panel has so many configuration categories to need two rows) for consistency across the UI, having a mix of horizontal tabs (no icon) and vertical tabs (w/icon) would just be confusing.
Comment 3 jan d 2025-06-24 12:23:03 UTC
> +1, but should be selectable from Tools ->  Options and not expert config. 

It is a good idea to build it knowing there might need to be an option for this, but given the amount of options we have already, I personally would not expose the option for now.
Comment 4 Heiko Tietze 2025-07-09 11:04:24 UTC
The option will be available under Tools > Options > Appearance: Dialogs, Tab position: (o) Vertically ( ) Horizontally.
Comment 5 Michael Weghorn 2025-07-09 11:26:32 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #4)
> The option will be available under Tools > Options > Appearance: Dialogs,
> Tab position: (o) Vertically ( ) Horizontally.

I'm not a native English speaker, but wouldn't either

    Tab position: Left/Top

or

    Tab orientation: Vertical/Horizontal

be more logical?
Comment 6 V Stuart Foote 2025-07-09 12:42:40 UTC
(In reply to Michael Weghorn from comment #5)
> (In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #4)

> 
>     Tab orientation: Vertical/Horizontal
> 
> be more logical?

Would be my suggestion, and would help l10n translators to process.
Comment 7 Commit Notification 2025-07-09 13:52:25 UTC
Heiko Tietze committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/fc741371fa283036cdbd12be59c769c7cac39437

Resolves tdf#167108 - Option to use horizontal tabs instead vertical

It will be available in 26.2.0.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 8 Heiko Tietze 2025-07-09 14:16:26 UTC
It is "Vertical at the side" and "Horizontal on top" (don't want to use "Left" because it might be on the right side in case of RTL).
Comment 9 Michael Weghorn 2025-07-10 09:33:08 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #8)
> It is "Vertical at the side" and "Horizontal on top" (don't want to use
> "Left" because it might be on the right side in case of RTL).

Good point!
Comment 10 Heiko Tietze 2025-07-10 09:46:08 UTC
The implemented does a boolean switch, tabs are either vertical or horizontal. It would be much nicer if there was a numeric option that allows to go with HT in case of less than 4 tabs, for example. It's blocked with builder.cxx extractVerticalTabPos() where the total number of tabs is unknown. Could work for gtk3 where VT and HT are handled in the same class. Once we improve the other code paths the more fine-grained setting might become possible.
Comment 11 Michael Weghorn 2025-07-10 09:49:14 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #10)
> The implemented does a boolean switch, tabs are either vertical or
> horizontal. It would be much nicer if there was a numeric option that allows
> to go with HT in case of less than 4 tabs, for example. It's blocked with
> builder.cxx extractVerticalTabPos() where the total number of tabs is
> unknown.

I'd try to keep it simple...