Bug 168861 - long normal tooltips are hard to read
Summary: long normal tooltips are hard to read
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: UI (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
26.2.0.0 alpha0+ master
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Regina Henschel
URL:
Whiteboard: target:26.2.0 target:25.8.3
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Tooltip
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2025-10-14 22:48 UTC by Regina Henschel
Modified: 2025-10-19 11:05 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Screenshot with long tooltip (166.12 KB, image/png)
2025-10-14 22:48 UTC, Regina Henschel
Details
HELPTEXTMAXLEN = 100 (28.64 KB, image/png)
2025-10-15 06:15 UTC, Heiko Tietze
Details

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Description Regina Henschel 2025-10-14 22:48:41 UTC
Created attachment 203338 [details]
Screenshot with long tooltip

Here an example of a problematic tooltip:

Start Writer and write some dummy text.
Make sure "extended Tips" is off so that you get the normal tooltips.
File > Export... > Type PDF > Save
You now should have got the dialog "PDF Options".
Hover with the mouse over the label "Universal Accessibility (Pdf/UA)".

You get a very long, single line tooltip. Such long lines are hard to read.

Cancel.

Now enable "extended Tips", start the PDF export again and hover again with the mouse over the label. Notice, that you now get the same text in a small rectangle were the tooltip wraps. That is much easier to read.

My request is, to have line wrap for normal tooltips too.
Comment 1 V Stuart Foote 2025-10-15 01:36:34 UTC
(In reply to Regina Henschel from comment #0)
 
> My request is, to have line wrap for normal tooltips too.

+1
Comment 2 Heiko Tietze 2025-10-15 06:11:56 UTC
Some 50 characters (or rather glyphs) sounds like a good number.
Comment 3 Heiko Tietze 2025-10-15 06:15:53 UTC
Created attachment 203339 [details]
HELPTEXTMAXLEN = 100

Following Michael's suggestion from https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2025-October/093867.html
Comment 4 Heiko Tietze 2025-10-15 06:17:23 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #2)
> Some 50 characters...

(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #3)
> HELPTEXTMAXLEN = 100

Whether 50 or 100 the result looks the same on VCL=gen.
Comment 5 Regina Henschel 2025-10-15 12:09:05 UTC
The extended tips wrap at about 40 characters (in Latin script) and that looks good.

If the maximal length is decreased, long normal tips will be handled as if they are extended tips. The value for HELPTEXTMAXLEN only determines when the switch appears. It is in https://opengrok.libreoffice.org/xref/core/vcl/source/app/help.cxx?r=1f0d2531dbeff80eeb3a4fe8485ef1baec6d5752&mo=1322&fi=40#325

When a long normal tip is handled as extended tip, they will no longer automatically disappear. Such should only happen for really long tips. For them you need more time to read anyway. Going down with HELPTEXTMAXLEN to 50 would affect too many help tips, I think.

In general I think, that normal help tips should always wrap the same as extended tips, but their ability of automatically disappearing should be kept. If there is no easy solution for that, changing the threshold value to 100 is a good compromise.

I have learned on the mailing list, that disappearing of help tips is an advanced accessibility setting. It is `IsHelpTipsDisappear` and `HelpTipSeconds` in org.openoffice.Office.Common.Accessibility.
Comment 6 Regina Henschel 2025-10-15 15:44:59 UTC
(In reply to Regina Henschel from comment #5)
> In general I think, that normal help tips should always wrap the same as
> extended tips, but their ability of automatically disappearing should be
> kept.

Tested again. A normal tip rendered with line wrap still disappears. So decreasing the max line length will solve the here reported problem.
Comment 7 Regina Henschel 2025-10-15 17:51:08 UTC
I have put the threshold change to 100 into patch https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/192458
Comment 8 Commit Notification 2025-10-16 22:49:58 UTC
Regina Henschel committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/34612217f8a027b940169899eb5c5514155649df

tdf#168861 tooltip line wrap for length > 100 char

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 9 Commit Notification 2025-10-17 11:13:34 UTC
Regina Henschel committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "libreoffice-25-8":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/3ba0ea447d88856da2e08db3ad3b12c0a7f622d3

tdf#168861 tooltip line wrap for length > 100 char

It will be available in 25.8.3.

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 10 Adolfo Jayme Barrientos 2025-10-19 11:05:12 UTC
Thanks for the usability improvement, Regina!