Description: Currently in the Styles sidebar you have to constantly switch between "Custom Styles" and "Applied Styles" particularly when doing a lot of documents, it is an extremely unsatisfactory arrangement. Even when you create a new style to immediately use you actually have to switch view to use it. Without altering the existing options can I highly recommend an extra choice of "Custom and Applied Styles" which people can choose to have them coalesced as one. Unless a document has a lot of custom styles I imagine most people would tend to use this option by default. Steps to Reproduce: (View the styles sidebar, click the droplist at the bottom) Actual Results: . Expected Results: . Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: No Additional Info: .
I agree on this one. I also felt that. UX Team -- please take a look at this enhancement. Thanks!
+1 an additional list view, combining 'Applied' styles with user's 'Custom' styles, would be reasonable style filtering for efficient authoring.
(In reply to DM from comment #0) > ...constantly switch between "Custom Styles" and "Applied Styles" I'm a bit hesitant to add another filter option, in particular one that kind of replaces an existing. And I guess we cannot just remove the existing options when adding the merged one. So could you please elaborate a bit on the use case first?
So basically unlike most of the items in All Styles, Custom styles are ones you actually plan to apply or are likely to apply, so you want them listed in one single list with the applieds, and you can simply have a narrow edge column indicating by a symbol whether each style in that list is actually applied or not. For that matter for the same reason there's separate buttons for paragraph and character styles, and you currently have to constantly hop around between those two. A list combining Custom and Applied should therefore also have the different types together in a single unified list, and you can have a narrow edge column indicating style type. The present situation of constantly having to switch types and drop the style list to switch between Applied and Custom styles has little benefit except where there are a very large number of styles, but is both extremely inefficient and given it's something that doesn't have to be that way also very irritating. If you are working on a lot of small documents there is no end to this switching you have to do just to do very basic formatting. Even just to apply "No character style" can take five clicks: change to character style, pull up style group selector, choose applied style, double-click "No character style" - it's far too much. When you create a new style to use, it just disappears and can't be used so you have to click the style group selector, custom style, then double-click the style you created just in order then to apply it - again quite unnecessary. By contrast having a combined list choice that can be left open at the side for clicking on and using with no switching about is much more practical.
(In reply to DM from comment #4) > Custom styles are ones you actually plan to apply or are likely to apply... 'Custom Styles' are a proper subset of 'Applied Styles' (besides it doesn't work correctly in all scenarios). I'm rather seeking for something like this: "I create a PS "Address" that I use in letters and another PS "Summary" for publications. All are stored in a template and loaded for new documents. Now I want to check whether my document has the proper styles applied, which are not the default because my co-worker sometimes uses the shipped style "Sender" instead of "Address"." PS = paragraph style
In terms of GUI presentation I think the matter can be achieved as follows - Add a "Applied & Custom Styles" group to the pop-list at the bottom of the style pane. When chosen it indicates Applieds and Customs, of all types, with the side symbol column mentioned to indicate InUse or not. Now if you choose one of the style type buttons at the top of the pane (such as Character etc) it filters to that style. Click that style type button again (that's the active filter) and it toggles off to the fuller list. Ctrl-Clicking those buttons should allow multiple to be on at the same time. So the type buttons at the top should be multi-select using the standard method of multi-selection and breaking out of multi-selection (much as with ctrl-selecting thumbnails in a file viewer), and this could happen with all poplist groups. Multiple type buttons being chosen should trigger a column symbol for type against the listed styles. I think this would give plenty of control to the user to present things in the way that is helpful to them.
I'm still not convinced about the use case. My doubts are mostly that Custom Styles are always a subset of Applied Styles. The general ides about Styles management was outlined in https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2019/11/05/proposal-to-conveniently-highlight-and-inspect-styles-in-libreoffice-writer/ and implemented mostly meanwhile. I would keep the functionality of a filter as clear as possible (and made the "Hidden" option a checkbox in the mockup therefore). We may of course do the same for applied styles but it feels wrong to me (and consequently requires to remove this option from the filter).
The use case is basically that the current setup is a result of designing a thing from a perfect theoretical standpoint but not from a practical productivity one. Can I highlight the first two comments made at the top by other users that bear this out.
I apply custom styles, but also existing styles. If I move to Custom styles I will not see other styles, in order to apply them. If I go to Applied styles, I can loose some if for the moment I don't have used some of the styles yet, but they are in Custom styles.
@Heiko, the use case is pretty clear. "Custom" styles are user defined and are portable/reusable when saved out to template. They can be opened back into a current document, and are there ready to select without having to have been "Applied". While authoring, having the ability to see a listing of styles already "Applied" combined with the users preferred/necessary "Custom" styles (that can be prepared and refined external to the current document) further facilitates text entry with well styled formatting. Think of authoring and making use of publisher or design specific paragraph or character styling. Very quickly the "Custom" styles would duplicate to the "Applied" listing, but until well into a document user is forced to change between the listings.
In fact I was wrong with my subset argument. Creating a style as children of Addressee, for example, does not add it automatically (and falsely) to the Applied Styles. In this case there are plenty of obvious use cases. So my concerns are then the combination of two filters. No strong objection to a checkbox, besides the necessary space.