Bug 169659 - Show tooltips for keyboard shortcut items in Customize dialog
Summary: Show tooltips for keyboard shortcut items in Customize dialog
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: UI (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
25.8.3.2 release
Hardware: All All
: medium minor
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: needsUXEval
Depends on:
Blocks: Customize-Dialog-Keyboard
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2025-11-24 10:57 UTC by BDF
Modified: 2025-12-10 15:19 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
CALC - keyboard shortcut - function name (123.39 KB, image/png)
2025-11-24 10:57 UTC, BDF
Details

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Description BDF 2025-11-24 10:57:13 UTC
Description:
Some names of keyboard shortcuts are not descriptive enough to see at first glance what they really do.

My guess is that the function as well as naming of buttons found in the drop down menus are copied. This makes sense for some buttons that are descriptive enough by themselves (eg. "Export as PDF") but does not work very well for others as their name only makes sense from where they are inside the menu (eg. add -> Foot/Endnote -> Footnote)

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open the keybinding menu and search for eg. footnote
2. The text alone does not tell you what it does. There also is no description displayed on hovering with mouse

Actual Results:
For eg. "Footnote" it does not tell you anything what the button does.

Add a footnote? Remove a footnote? Toggle visibility of footnotes? Open a context menu where you can edit their style? Open some window in which you can edit them all at once?

Expected Results:
The text of buttons is more descriptive when their name only makes sense if they are nested in their menu structure.
So in the case given the name in the keybinding list could be "Add footnote" instead of just "Footnote"


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:
LibreOffice info:
Version: 25.8.3.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 8ca8d55c161d602844f5428fa4b58097424e324e
CPU threads: 12; OS: Linux 6.14; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: de-AT (de_AT.UTF-8); UI: de-DE
Flatpak
Calc: threaded
Comment 1 BDF 2025-11-24 10:57:48 UTC
Created attachment 204251 [details]
CALC - keyboard shortcut - function name
Comment 2 Buovjaga 2025-12-09 07:09:08 UTC
It's true that for keyboard shortcuts, no helpful tooltip is shown. If you go to menu items, you will see info for the individual items.
Comment 3 Buovjaga 2025-12-09 07:18:32 UTC
(In reply to Buovjaga from comment #2)
> It's true that for keyboard shortcuts, no helpful tooltip is shown. If you
> go to menu items, you will see info for the individual items.

Hmm, I'm not sure what happened earlier, because now I can see the tooltips. Maybe there is some state that the tooltips are not shown and some processing needs to happen?!

Can you do more testing?

Version: 26.8.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: a76f0371596f0037444c40fe3dcad5b4fef18c24
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 6.17; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: fi-FI (fi_FI.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded
Comment 4 V Stuart Foote 2025-12-09 13:32:42 UTC
The tooltips *only* appear in the 'Functions' block of the 'Keyboard' tab, but they do not show for the actual assignments in the UI's upper listing of 'Shortcut Keys'. Currently all that is shown on mouseover anywhere in the area of the UI is the generic tooltip: "To quickly find a shortcut in this list, simply press the key combination".

This differs from the other panels of the 'Customize' dialog, where a tooltip (with UNO and shortcut if any) as assigned to the control is shown on mouseover. 
The tooltip duplicates what is shown in the 'Description' (though no Description was added for the Notebookbar customizations, but they get the same tooltips). 

It would be helpful to Keyboard customization if somehow similar descriptive tooltip could be shown on mouseover of the UNO assignments listed with their 'Shortcut Keys'.

Seems this didn't get picked up as bug 112237 was implemented with https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/140142

@Jim, what do you think, can the work on bug 112237 be expanded?
Comment 5 Jim Raykowski 2025-12-10 00:15:16 UTC
(In reply to V Stuart Foote from comment #4)
> @Jim, what do you think, can the work on bug 112237 be expanded?
Sure can! If we want to make this a hack for a beginner I will supply code pointers. If we would like this enhancement sooner than later, please let me know ;)
Comment 6 Heiko Tietze 2025-12-10 09:36:55 UTC
(In reply to BDF from comment #0)
> 1. Open the keybinding menu and search for eg. footnote
> 2. The text alone does not tell you what it does. There also is no
> description displayed on hovering with mouse
IMO the tooltip on the functions list is sufficient. The mentioned workflow is not to look through the assigned shortcuts and find those that can be overwritten.

We should rather invest on a complete redesign of the dialog, bug 115527 and other.
Comment 7 V Stuart Foote 2025-12-10 15:19:35 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #6)
> (In reply to BDF from comment #0)
> > 1. Open the keybinding menu and search for eg. footnote
> > 2. The text alone does not tell you what it does. There also is no
> > description displayed on hovering with mouse
> IMO the tooltip on the functions list is sufficient. The mentioned workflow
> is not to look through the assigned shortcuts and find those that can be
> overwritten.
> 
> We should rather invest on a complete redesign of the dialog, bug 115527 and
> other.

Issue of OP was that the description doesn't show--but it does. Just only on the Function listbox when user filters by search.

Comment 4 suggests an overlooked implementation issue in that for the Keyboard panel, an onmouseover of an assigned function should show tooltip with details of the associated UNO assigned. *For consistency with the other customization panels*.

Full redesign of the customization dialog aside, this current inconsistency on the Keyboard panel should be tweaked for better UX. Providing details of the actual UNO assigned to accelerator/shortcut that is now missing to put it on par with the other panels.